Historical flavour over accuracy

[Olleus]

I'm going to make myself a lot of enemies here and claim that Civilization has never been historically accurate. It's never even really tried to IMO. It's history flavoured. And not even the natural flavour that comes from squeezing a fruit, but the artificial kind made in a factory which is only a mimicry of the real thing. And that's perfectly fine, great even.

I think this because the fundamental systems of Civilization (any entry in the series) are completely alien to history in innumerable ways: a completely invented geographical setting, all civilizations starting at the same time in the same state while 99% of the map is utterly devoid of humans, a centralised program of scientific research in the stone age, troops taking decades to march in and out of a city, archers shooting over an entire city, the same thing speeding up the construction of both tanks and libraries, having complete control over every job of every individual in the civilization, culture bombing, immortal leaders, making plans that last millennia, etc... In fact, I doubt there's a single game mechanic in any Civilization game which is historically accurate in its details, or a single historical process that's accurately depicted in Civilization on anything more than an abstract, allegorical level. While a lot of my love from history grew out of playing civilization as a kid, it also "taught" me lots of things that I've had to unlearn later as I got deeper into history, eg: that sword beats spear, or that technological progress has always been the main determinant of a nation's success.

And yet past Civilizations have been fantastic, immersive games! Historical accuracy is thus clearly not required. That's not to down play the importance of historical "flavour" and immersion. The latter is vital in any game, and the former is a cornerstone of Civilization and does contribute to (without being the sole factor for) immersion. But the historical flavour doesn't do that by being accurate. My theory is that it does so by making call-backs from the fictional world we create in-game to real-world history that we already know about, and this call-back immerses us in the mood and feelings that comes from thinking about historical things. So when you build the Pyramids, you think about ancient Egypt and that immerses you in the feelings that you associate from ancient Egypt - it's unaffected by whether the pyramids are a magic font of granaries, or if it lets you enter a representative democracy, or if they make builders magically be able to build more farms before self imploding. In that sense, the historical flavour plays a similar role as the tech quotes. [Which, incidentally, would explain why that awful Civ6 quote about Roman air conditioning got so much hate - it's like biting into a raisin when you were expecting a chocolate chip.]

Which I think circles back to the perennial topic of why a lot of folk don't like the idea of civ swapping, and I'll be bold enough to venture that some didn't know themselves (or couldn't express) why they don't like it. It's not that it's ahistorical (for all the reasons given above), but that it breaks the historical flavour. They wanted to play an Egypt-flavoured game, and 1/3 of the way through they have to switch to a Mongolia or Songhai flavour: they wanted chocolate ice cream but were forced into Neapolitan. To me personally, the idea of playing with a Civ-flavour that changes to match the time-flavour of every era sounds pretty cool. Yet I do still empathise the loss of having a single Civ-flavour the entire game. [Not that history-flavour is the only thematic or attachement-related part of the game that is affected by civ swapping.]

To be even more conjectural, I wonder if this is the reason Humankind was disliked (I never played it myself), outside of anything to do with the game's mechanics per se. It's that it lacked this historical flavour. People did call it bland after all. More precisely, its historical flavours were never strong enough and long lasting enough to trigger this immersive call-back from the game to real-world history.

I'll stop pontificating here, and apologise for stretching a tenuous food-based metaphor for quite so long...

 

[rrreese]

Bruce Shelley the other Civ 1 Designer said:

> The Secret was we go to the children's section of the library, because we're trying to reach a broad audience

This always struck true to me. As you say its historically flavoured, but not historical. And yet a lot can still be learned from those games

 

[Chiyo]

Bruce Shelley the other Civ 1 Designer said:

> The Secret was we go to the children's section of the library, because we're trying to reach a broad audience

This always struck true to me. As you say its historically flavoured, but not historical. And yet a lot can still be learned from those games

Great quote which shows the risk of having too many civs ( or cultures? nations? peoples?) in the game that non-historians do not know. I rather play against Napoleon or Louis XIV. than the Medici queen we saw in Civ VI. I hope that the civ rosters we saw in some threads here will not be true as they contain so many civs I have hardly heard of and don't know much about.

 

[Deer]

I think you are correct in the idea that the game has never been historically accurate. In truth, I am not convinced they had the capacity to make a historically accurate and fun game in the same way that the Paradox Grand Strategy games are historically accurate at the time that the first Civ game was released. This might just be semantics, but I might have called it history-centric or history-based rather than history flavoured.

But to your point: From what I can see, there is a bit of a disconnect between the reasoning on the franchise being history flavoured and people not liking this new change because it is ahistorical. I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone to accept being able to pick research priorities as a way to simulate that different civilizations had different emphasis on which part of their societies that they developed - whilst also thinking that it is completely ahistorical for the Egyptians to become the Mongolians, possibly spearheaded by Benjamin Franklin. Especially in this early stage when we have not yet seen how the mechanic will work in full: People have not been given a guide to how the game developers wants us to rationalise it as part of the simulation. From where I stand, it seems odd to compare worker charges - perhaps symbolising the need for a civilization to make continuous investments to develop their lands - with all the variants of how this feature could be implemented. I don't think we (or at least I) know enough to be able to properly judge the historicity of this mechanic.

I honestly do not know why you would think that a portion of the critics of the system don't know why they don't like it or are incapable of expressing why they don't like it. I really don't want to be rude or mean when I say this: It seems somewhat dismissive, to say the least. I, by the way, don't view myself as a critic at the moment, for we have too little information.

As for Humankind: I think you are onto something when you say that it was perceived as bland because the historical flavours weren't strong enough. I think it goes beyond immersion, for the weak flavour and fictional leaders made it hard to pinpoint who 'green' was beyond the colour on the map. Having fixed and historical leaders with some personality when it comes to how they behave will likely go a long way to amend that from a gameplay perspective. It will probably not be quite as strong as what we've already got, however, with musical themes, historically inspired map colours etc. Humankind also implemented civ-switching in a way which had you chose between going for more era stars, which is a win condition, or risking having your preferred culture taken by another player. It will be interesting to see how they do it in Civ7.

 

[Professor Phobo]

It's sort of like a vaguely history themed amusement park. Shake hands with a giant headed George Washington. Win a stuffed Genghis Khan. Go on Gandhi's "Our Words Are Backed by Nuclear Weapons!" rollercoaster ride.

 

[Gori the Grey]

making plans that last millennia

One of my favorites (Civ V, don't know if this carried over into VI) is that another leader can ask you if you want to attack some other nation and one of your responses can be "give me 10 turns to prepare." In certain eras, 10 turns is 400 years. If some world leader came to you and asked, "should we attack X?" and your response was, "well, 400 years from now, I'll join you in such an attack," that leader would think you were nuts!

Anyway, you'll get no enmity from me regarding your post; it corresponds exactly to how I see the matter. The civs are mostly just bundles of bonuses, and wouldn't have to correspond to any real-life thing for the game to be fun as a strategy game: Catan, e.g. or Beyond Earth, really. But it adds a kind of flavor that there are these callbacks, as you call them.

I might tweak one of your points, though, having to do with people's resistance to civ-switching. I don't think that has to do with the "historical flavor" dimension of the game. Again, I'm already buying into the world where as Egypt, I can build the Eiffel Tower. I think that has to do with the game dimension of the game. You don't start a game of Monopoly as the top hat, and then switch to the thimble and then switch to the racing car. The starting representation of yourself in the game has to remain steady for you to feel like there was a you who competed through the entire game and then won the game. Now whether the stability of the leader will be able to do that for players in Civ VII, we'll see. I've said that keeping your border colors the same throughout will help me to feel like I'm the same me, age to age. I think they might do other things. I think the color of the flag behind your leader might remain the same and only its insignia change, as you become a new civilization.

 

[Olleus]

But to your point: From what I can see, there is a bit of a disconnect between the reasoning on the franchise being history flavoured and people not liking this new change because it is ahistorical. I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone to accept being able to pick research priorities as a way to simulate that different civilizations had different emphasis on which part of their societies that they developed - whilst also thinking that it is completely ahistorical for the Egyptians to become the Mongolians, possibly spearheaded by Benjamin Franklin. Especially in this early stage when we have not yet seen how the mechanic will work in full: People have not been given a guide to how the game developers wants us to rationalise it as part of the simulation. From where I stand, it seems odd to compare worker charges - perhaps symbolising the need for a civilization to make continuous investments to develop their lands - with all the variants of how this feature could be implemented. I don't think we (or at least I) know enough to be able to properly judge the historicity of this mechanic.

Firstly I think it's worth clarifying that this thread isn't about civ-swapping specifically, that's only a case study that we can apply this idea to and see how it holds up.

I certainly agree that we don't know about the civ swapping in detail yes. But, to some extent, we don't need to for this purpose. Because it's not about exact effects, or balance, or strategic choices; it's about how the feature resonates with us, and I think we do have enough of a picture to see the broad strokes in this regard. And yes, it is completely ahistorical for an agent / state / collective-will (whatever historical decision-making 'thing' the player is supposed to embody) to direct the scientific research (of which there was none) of a stone age society towards a single goal over centuries. Is it more or less ahistorical than for an agent / state / collective-will to shape the culture of a whole nation over a centuries-long crisis so that it morphs from Egyptian-esque to Mongolian-esque? It's different, but how can we rank ahistoricity? Is there a leaderboard of the absurd?

Or, as is the thesis of this thread, are the answers to these questions irrelevant to our feeling of immersion while playing it? Saying that someone dislikes a feature because it gives them a whiplash of flavour change (or the fear of such a whiplash) doesn't invalidate their dislike of the feature, it's merely an different explanation for that dislike. One that, I believe, is more consistent with them liking other part of the game, with the argument for that belief laid out above.

I honestly do not know why you would think that a portion of the critics of the system don't know why they don't like it or are incapable of expressing why they don't like it. I really don't want to be rude or mean when I say this: It seems somewhat dismissive, to say the least. I, by the way, don't view myself as a critic at the moment, for we have too little information.

I didn't mean it to be dismissive, and I did caveat it ("bold enough to venture" is not a turn of phrase I use when I'm 100% certain of myself). I also don't think it's unusual for people to not know why they like/dislike things, nor dismissive to suggest it. I've often put down a book or walked out of a cinema having experienced something I loved or hated, but not been able to pin down why I had that reaction. And even if I can say something like "it was that scene which was really funny," I'm unlikely to be able to pin down why that scene worked but a similar one in a similar movie didn't. Surely that's the whole point of analysing media: to understand why we have the reaction to pieces of media that we do? They'd be no need to do that if we had an immediate and infallible knowledge of why we like the things we like. I won't claim to be an expert on any of this, but the idea in the OP did seem to both make sense and have explanatory power to me, hence why I shared it for discussion.

 

[Zaarin]

Great quote which shows the risk of having too many civs ( or cultures? nations? peoples?) in the game that non-historians do not know. I rather play against Napoleon or Louis XIV. than the Medici queen we saw in Civ VI. I hope that the civ rosters we saw in some threads here will not be true as they contain so many civs I have hardly heard of and don't know much about.

Yeah, it sure would suck if you learned something.

 

[Olleus]

> The Secret was we go to the children's section of the library, because we're trying to reach a broad audience

Great quote which shows the risk of having too many civs ( or cultures? nations? peoples?) in the game that non-historians do not know. I rather play against Napoleon or Louis XIV. than the Medici queen we saw in Civ VI. I hope that the civ rosters we saw in some threads here will not be true as they contain so many civs I have hardly heard of and don't know much about.

Yeah, it sure would suck if you learned something.

It seems to me that, as the average age of the civ player has increased in the last 30 years (an unverified assumption from my part, but likely true?), it makes sense to dig a little deeper into "obscure" history to keep the same effect. After all, hasn't it always been a mixture of stuff you're very familiar with, stuff that rings a bell, and stuff that raises your curiosity?

 

[Zaarin]

It seems to me that, as the average age of the civ player has increased in the last 30 years (an unverified assumption from my part, but likely true?), it makes sense to dig a little deeper into "obscure" history to keep the same effect. After all, hasn't it always been a mixture of stuff you're very familiar with, stuff that rings a bell, and stuff that raises your curiosity?

Even if it were aimed squarely at children, including the lesser known leaders and cultures would be good. How many of us got our interests in history whet by games like Civilization and Age of Empires? History is more than the highlight reel.

 

[pokiehl]

I hope that the civ rosters we saw in some threads here will not be true as they contain so many civs I have hardly heard of and don't know much about.

I think it’s a good thing that we get more obscure civs and leaders. Civ 6 I learned a lot from; I had never heard of Mapuche or Catherine De Medici or Kristina or many others.

I believe in the gameplay showcase, the devs specifically said they’re looking to showcase more civs that haven’t been in the game before.

Plus I think the format of Civ 7 (3 ages, decoupling leaders from civs) will really facilitate the inclusion of more civs than in other games period, which means more room for less obvious choices.

 

[Olleus]

Even if it were aimed squarely at children, including the lesser known leaders and cultures would be good. How many of us got our interests in history whet by games like Civilization and Age of Empires? History is more than the highlight reel.

True, but it's easier to get into something if there's a hook that links to something you already have some familiarity with, than if it's a wall of strange unknowns. There's also a risk for the, less say, less historically-confident folk, that if they see a bunch of stuff they have no clue about on a wide audience piece of media like the Civilization series, that they'll end up feeling as if they're the only one so thick that they haven't heard about it, and disconnect from both Civilization and history because of it. A common reaction? I don't know, but I wouldn't rule it out, especially from teenagers who think of themselves as history-nerds.

 

[Zaarin]

True, but it's easier to get into something if there's a hook that links to something you already have some familiarity with, than if it's a wall of strange unknowns. There's also a risk for the, less say, less historically-confident folk, that if they see a bunch of stuff they have no clue about on a wide audience piece of media like the Civilization series, that they'll end up feeling as if they're the only one so thick that they haven't heard about it, and disconnect from both Civilization and history because of it. A common reaction? I don't know, but I wouldn't rule it out, especially from teenagers who think of themselves as history-nerds.

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that every civ should be Tlingit led by Chief Shakes, but we'll always have the big names like Alexander and Genghis Khan--I don't think it's bad at all to intersperse lesser knowns among the big names. (Also, Napoleon doesn't need to be one of the big names. I have never felt more incentivized not to have a 2K account. )

 

[Arent11]

I'm going to make myself a lot of enemies here and claim that Civilization has never been historically accurate. It's never even really tried to IMO. It's history flavoured. And not even the natural flavour that comes from squeezing a fruit, but the artificial kind made in a factory which is only a mimicry of the real thing. And that's perfectly fine, great even.

I think this because the fundamental systems of Civilization (any entry in the series) are completely alien to history in innumerable ways: a completely invented geographical setting, all civilizations starting at the same time in the same state while 99% of the map is utterly devoid of humans, a centralised program of scientific research in the stone age, troops taking decades to march in and out of a city, archers shooting over an entire city, the same thing speeding up the construction of both tanks and libraries, having complete control over every job of every individual in the civilization, culture bombing, immortal leaders, making plans that last millennia, etc... In fact, I doubt there's a single game mechanic in any Civilization game which is historically accurate in its details, or a single historical process that's accurately depicted in Civilization on anything more than an abstract, allegorical level. While a lot of my love from history grew out of playing civilization as a kid, it also "taught" me lots of things that I've had to unlearn later as I got deeper into history, eg: that sword beats spear, or that technological progress has always been the main determinant of a nation's success.

And yet past Civilizations have been fantastic, immersive games! Historical accuracy is thus clearly not required. That's not to down play the importance of historical "flavour" and immersion. The latter is vital in any game, and the former is a cornerstone of Civilization and does contribute to (without being the sole factor for) immersion. But the historical flavour doesn't do that by being accurate. My theory is that it does so by making call-backs from the fictional world we create in-game to real-world history that we already know about, and this call-back immerses us in the mood and feelings that comes from thinking about historical things. So when you build the Pyramids, you think about ancient Egypt and that immerses you in the feelings that you associate from ancient Egypt - it's unaffected by whether the pyramids are a magic font of granaries, or if it lets you enter a representative democracy, or if they make builders magically be able to build more farms before self imploding. In that sense, the historical flavour plays a similar role as the tech quotes. [Which, incidentally, would explain why that awful Civ6 quote about Roman air conditioning got so much hate - it's like biting into a raisin when you were expecting a chocolate chip.]

Which I think circles back to the perennial topic of why a lot of folk don't like the idea of civ swapping, and I'll be bold enough to venture that some didn't know themselves (or couldn't express) why they don't like it. It's not that it's ahistorical (for all the reasons given above), but that it breaks the historical flavour. They wanted to play an Egypt-flavoured game, and 1/3 of the way through they have to switch to a Mongolia or Songhai flavour: they wanted chocolate ice cream but were forced into Neapolitan. To me personally, the idea of playing with a Civ-flavour that changes to match the time-flavour of every era sounds pretty cool. Yet I do still empathise the loss of having a single Civ-flavour the entire game. [Not that history-flavour is the only thematic or attachement-related part of the game that is affected by civ swapping.]

To be even more conjectural, I wonder if this is the reason Humankind was disliked (I never played it myself), outside of anything to do with the game's mechanics per se. It's that it lacked this historical flavour. People did call it bland after all. More precisely, its historical flavours were never strong enough and long lasting enough to trigger this immersive call-back from the game to real-world history.

I'll stop pontificating here, and apologise for stretching a tenuous food-based metaphor for quite so long...

There's nothing wrong with that. I don't require historical accuracy.

When I say "immersion" I mean "let me fight the Mongols of Ghengis Khan" and "flirt with Cleopatra of Egypt". It wouldn't be very romantic to flirt with Cleopatra of the Mongols

 

[Olleus]

When I say "immersion" I mean "let me fight the Mongols of Ghengis Khan" and "flirt with Cleopatra of Egypt". It wouldn't be very romantic to flirt with Cleopatra of the Mongols

Which I think is an additional data point in favour of my theory of immersion-by-linked-memory. You associate romance with Cleopatra of Egypt because of general culture, and so when something happens in the game that makes you recall that, you get bring that memory and all its associations into the game where they immerse you. But you have no such romantic associations with the Mongols, so the alternate scenario doesn't ring any bells and so there's no sense of familiarity to lead to immersion.

The real question, of course, is would Genghis Khan of Egypt have been able to seduce Julius Caesar? Rumours say he was partial to a Bithynian king after all...

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Difficult to argue against your main point, it's pretty clear that "Civilization has never been historically accurate... It's history flavoured".

It's also clear that immersion is subjective, hence why we see such a range of reaction to switching. Ultimately it's about how we feel when we play the game, and everyone has different tastes. This is why I think a lot of the reaction is premature; you can get some sense of how it will feel through watching gameplay, but you need to watch an awful lot (and we haven't been shown enough yet). Otherwise, the only way to really know is to play it.

 

[Olleus]

Difficult to argue against your main point, it's pretty clear that "Civilization has never been historically accurate... It's history flavoured".

I'd say that my main point - or the more novel one at least - is more that:

Historical flavour doesn't do that [cause immersion] by being accurate. My theory is that it does so by making call-backs from the fictional world we create in-game to real-world history that we already know about, and this call-back immerses us in the mood and feelings that comes from thinking about historical things.

I'd say that, if anything, this could explain why it's so subjective. Because we all have different knowledge, familiarity, and associations with different pieces of history, when the historical flavour of the game triggers a call-back, we each bring something different back into game. Or, when the call-back doesn't happen, the failure to bring a specific mood, feeling, or recollection into the game hits us differently. Would you agree with that too?

 

[Uberfrog]

I'm going to make myself a lot of enemies here and claim that Civilization has never been historically accurate. It's never even really tried to IMO. It's history flavoured.

I think you’re being too cautious here. I don’t think anybody was under the impression that a game series in which Montezuma declares war on Julius Caesar, the Americans build the Pyramids in Washington DC, and the Synthetic Technocracy of Korea is the first nation to send a colony ship to Alpha Centauri was ever historically accurate.

I think the disagreement is what level of historical accuracy (or perhaps a better term is authenticity) is necessary to achieve that flavour. Obviously if the series were not grounded in history at all, and had fantastical elements, it would lose some of its appeal among fans who want to play a historical strategy game.

It's not that it's ahistorical (for all the reasons given above), but that it breaks the historical flavour. They wanted to play an Egypt-flavoured game, and 1/3 of the way through they have to switch to a Mongolia or Songhai flavour: they wanted chocolate ice cream but were forced into Neapolitan.

Perhaps you are right. But I think part of the problem with the series up to now, particularly Civ 6, is that there has been an increase in historical detail and cultural specificity only within a narrow time span of the game. So your Egypt flavour slowly dilutes from the Ancient Era to the Classical era, until it is all but absent in the late game and you may as well be playing any other civ.

I think one key advantage of the new approach to ages and civilisations is that each era, and each civ, can feel more distinct, more flavourful than is possible when the designers are trying to balance abilities throughout the whole game. And this could end up being good for how consistently fun the game feels in each age.

 

[Zaarin]

the Synthetic Technocracy of Korea is the first nation to send a colony ship to Alpha Centauri

I wouldn't be so certain that this doesn't turn out to be historically accurate...

 

[Ordnael]

Without a proper play-through of the game I can't say I'm against the civ swapping/evolving mechanic, as long as it's intuitive and fun I am all for it...but I must add that starting a game session with ancient Egypt with an ancient Egyptian leader and then swapping for a Mongolian flavoured civ leaded by Benjamin Franklin doesn't sit right with me either...it feels kinda bonkers and uncivlike... sure I love playing with vampires on CIV VI, but that's just a game mode, I choose to opt in for this weirdness. Maybe add a mode where the swapping has more historical flavour, make the ancient Egypt evolve into Rome and then Turkey maybe with proper historical flavoured leaders.