Historical flavour over accuracy

[tedhebert]

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.

As a long time civ player who was raised in a great education system but has very limited general knowledge of world history because our history classes were mainly centered on OUR country and it’s history, One of the things I enjoy the most is exactly THAT, having civs in game that I know little or even next to nothing about…

It sparkles my curiosity and makes me go search for information about it on the web… makes me want to figure out WHY they were given this or that building, unit or enhancement etc….

To me that a huge plus… but hey I’m not claiming I represent most players in this… just my 2 cents

 

[Milith]

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...

I don't think I've seen this issue put into words quite as well in this post, and I've seen many people try over the last couple weeks. Good job.

I'll add one thing. The civ 1-6 model of keeping that flavor throughout history is so simple that it's really easy to just accept it and not think about it too much. Civ 7 is introducing a more complex model, in which civ transitions happen either due to material conditions (e.g. Egypt > Mongols if you have 3 horses), or by virtue of them being the "natural historical path" (e.g. Egypt > Abbasid), or even due to your leader of choice (???). They're clearly trying to model some historical phenomenon here, albeit in a very boardgamey way. The fact that they're even trying to justify these transitions makes you think about them even more and I can't help but poke holes in it. Egypt > Abbasid being presented as historical for instance annoys me greatly because in real life this was contingent on events that won't happen in my campaign (neighboring Arabs coming up with Islam and going on a huge spree of conquests). The model of history they're going for is confusing and asks way more questions than it answers, I fear it's going to be pretty hard to tune out that annoying voice in the back of my head.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

I really like this video on the topic:

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

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?

Yes, I think that must also be true. The associations can be very broad too, my own knowledge of history is hardly special but I have fond memories of visiting the Bayeux Tapestry as a child, I had a Russian literature phase in my teens and loved War and Peace, etc. I bring all of these things with me when I play Civ.

 

[uppi]

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.

I disagree with the point that immersion is vital in any game. There are plenty of very successful games, that do not offer any kind of immersion. Chess has long moved beyond the battle simulation it may once have been. Tetris has falling blocks for unknown reasons, but no one cares. I'd even go so far that immersion is often at odds with a good game ruleset. A well-balanced game often has rules that outright ban perfectly reasonable things for no other reason that it would ruin the game. The pinnacle of game design would be to have both, of course, but that is hard to pull off. And especially indie games often successful when they heavily lean into one direction.

Civilization has often leaned more into immersion and as such has a fan base for which immersion is important. So sometimes, there are mechanics which are there for the sake of immersion which make the "game" aspect of it worse. But one should not forget that there are other games out there which have a different fan base and thus a different focus. And then there are other games who lean into the immersion so much that there is not much game left.

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 am not sure the flavours are not long-lasting enough in Humankind. UUs get obsolete, but so do they in Civ. The legacies lasts over the entire game (though in some cases they just get covered under a pile of other effects. In my opinion, the blandness of Humankind stems from the lack of identity for individual games. You start each game the same way, with the same avatar. The civ-combo is complex enough that you would not remember it. Except for conquest, there is only one victory condition. You don't want to specialize your empire too much, because that victory condition rewards middle-of-the-road, do-well-enough-in-everything, murder-people-just-for-points play. So why start another game? What would you do different?

 

[Olleus]

I disagree with the point that immersion is vital in any game. There are plenty of very successful games, that do not offer any kind of immersion.

I should clarified what I meant by immersion: entering a state of "flow" where I forget about everything outside the game and lose track of time. I'm no great chess player but, when I'm less terrible than usual, I can enter this state in chess too: because the mental effort of visualisation and calculation blocks everything else out. I even enter it when I'm programming! That is different to the more common definition of "immersion" in gaming, which is more about believing in the narrative of the game and maintaining the suspense of disbelief that it's all fictional, but I'd say there is some overlap. For sure, this latter definition of immersion is far from necessary for a good game, but I'd say the former is the sign of great game.

 

[luca 83]

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 not 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...

As I have already written, in my opinion the modern ai can simulate the economic territory, economic, even simulated, even the political, so if China is on an African territory, with African fauna, the ai will simulate the climate and the Ethiopian or Kenyan territory.

 

[Mekkh]

I disagree with the point that immersion is vital in any game. There are plenty of very successful games, that do not offer any kind of immersion. Chess has long moved beyond the battle simulation it may once have been. Tetris has falling blocks for unknown reasons, but no one cares. I'd even go so far that immersion is often at odds with a good game ruleset. A well-balanced game often has rules that outright ban perfectly reasonable things for no other reason that it would ruin the game. The pinnacle of game design would be to have both, of course, but that is hard to pull off. And especially indie games often successful when they heavily lean into one direction.

Civilization has often leaned more into immersion and as such has a fan base for which immersion is important. So sometimes, there are mechanics which are there for the sake of immersion which make the "game" aspect of it worse. But one should not forget that there are other games out there which have a different fan base and thus a different focus. And then there are other games who lean into the immersion so much that there is not much game left.




I am not sure the flavours are not long-lasting enough in Humankind. UUs get obsolete, but so do they in Civ. The legacies lasts over the entire game (though in some cases they just get covered under a pile of other effects. In my opinion, the blandness of Humankind stems from the lack of identity for individual games. You start each game the same way, with the same avatar. The civ-combo is complex enough that you would not remember it. Except for conquest, there is only one victory condition. You don't want to specialize your empire too much, because that victory condition rewards middle-of-the-road, do-well-enough-in-everything, murder-people-just-for-points play. So why start another game? What would you do different?

To some degree I would say Chess is an immersive game, and that's why it's so succesful. When you play chess, you take part in an age long tradition that has been widely romanticized. If chess came out today with the same rule set, I think very few people would care about it.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

To some degree I would say Chess is an immersive game, and that's why it's so succesful. When you play chess, you take part in an age long tradition that has been widely romanticized. If chess came out today with the same rule set, I think very few people would care about it.

There's the joke about how the anti-woke crowd would've hated chess for having the queen be the strongest piece in game, not to mention how any pawn that reaches the other end of the board turns into a queen, implying a gender change. I don't know if this is what would've actually happened, but it gets the point across about how people will try to raise hell over the most innocuous details

 

[Zaarin]

There's the joke about how the anti-woke crowd would've hated chess for having the queen be the strongest piece in game, not to mention how any pawn that reaches the other end of the board turns into a queen, implying a gender change. I don't know if this is what would've actually happened, but it gets the point across about how people will try to raise hell over the most innocuous details

In Persian, the Queen is the Vizier. Arabic, too, I think.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

In Persian, the Queen is the Vizier. Arabic, too, I think.

*Hindi. The queen was a vizier all the way from its Hindi beginnings, all the way to the game being introduced in medieval Europe. It was then and there that the largely useless vizier was replaced with a hilariously overpowered queen, to reflect on the prominence of female rulers at around that time period, with Eleanor of Aquitaine and Margaret I of Denmark being two examples iirc

 

[Zaarin]

*Hindi. The queen was a vizier all the way from its Hindi beginnings

I admit I know only a little about India and its languages. I do know the game was modified when it came to Persia, who distributed it to the rest of the world. I am endlessly fascinated that checkmate comes from šāh māt, "the shah is amazed."

 

[chaosprophet]

I disagree with the point that immersion is vital in any game. There are plenty of very successful games, that do not offer any kind of immersion. Chess has long moved beyond the battle simulation it may once have been. Tetris has falling blocks for unknown reasons, but no one cares. I'd even go so far that immersion is often at odds with a good game ruleset. A well-balanced game often has rules that outright ban perfectly reasonable things for no other reason that it would ruin the game. The pinnacle of game design would be to have both, of course, but that is hard to pull off. And especially indie games often successful when they heavily lean into one direction.

I agree with you in that I think immersion is overrated. But the problem is that term is used for different concepts: There is the more traditional meaning of feeling like you're part of the story, like you're living on that world and being part of it, more related with games where the player plays an avatar, generally rpgs and other narrative first person or third person games. But a common meaning for the term used nowadays when it comes to game means to get lost in a game, focused on playing it and forgetting about anything else, like wanting to play one more turn and when you noticed you went two hours over the time you were planning to spend playing the game that day. And then, it is also often used to point to some subject feeling you can't quite describe or don't want to brother describing that makes you like or dislike a game (just like the saying a game has "soul" or is "souless") but want to feel like it is an objective complaint, muddling the waters even more.

While using different concepts for the same word is fine, it often can cause equivocation, in that, for example, someone uses immersion to means getting lost in a game but then argues the game won't be immersive for them because of something that only really would apply for the inserting yourself in the world meaning of immersion, etc.

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.

Maybe i misunderstood you, but you don't change leaders thorough the game, only the civilization.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A couple of years ago I stopped referring to ANY computer game as 'historical'. My preferred term now is "Historicalish" and, frankly, many pay only lip service even to that.

Unless a 'game' is specifically intended to be a Teaching Tool, this is not a bad thing. A purely recreational game must, first last and always, be recreational. Historical accuracy must be sacrificed if it interferes with that.

So for the most part, it is far more accurate to refer to games as Alternate History rather than History: after all, we are not playing to recreate every historical detail, since that would be Boring As Hell. We are, usually, playing to create a new history of our particular in-game world and faction.

 

[BuchiTaton]

So for the most part, it is far more accurate to refer to games as Alternate History rather than History: after all, we are not playing to recreate every historical detail, since that would be Boring As Hell. We are, usually, playing to create a new history of our particular in-game world and faction.

Note the Alternative History part.

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Going from Egypt to Mongolia would not be a problem for CIV since build the Taj Mahal as Washington is a very CIV thing to do despite not being historical.
Now other not historical and very traditional CIV-thing to do is to take a civ like Babylon into the space race, but now this traditional alt-history plus civ-thing to do would not be possible despite there are gameplay design and historical analogues that could fit the general design around age shifts.

The issue with CIV7 is not historical vs accuracy, it is a false dichotomy between one of the favorite alt-history elements in CIV vs a new form of alt-history. There should not be such false selection, both could be possible to be represented as part of the same system.

 

[HktkNban]

The Civ is truly an alternative history simulator.

The Civ series is not a simulator that accurately mimics actual human history.
It is a simulator that experiments with the question, “How would history change in a world with different geographical conditions than reality?”
Thus, historical accuracy in Civ is not “Egyptian civilization always arose in the desert and had to build pyramids” but “If Egyptian civilization arose in the plains, they were likely to be nomadic and to have a strong cavalry force.”

 

[notNamed]

A couple of years ago I stopped referring to ANY computer game as 'historical'. My preferred term now is "Historicalish" and, frankly, many pay only lip service even to that.

Unless a 'game' is specifically intended to be a Teaching Tool, this is not a bad thing. A purely recreational game must, first last and always, be recreational. Historical accuracy must be sacrificed if it interferes with that.

Sacrificing historical accuracy where it interferes with enjoyment is obvious. Almost no one would enjoy waiting out turns to starve out besieged cities, losing battles to random morale flukes, having to do nothing because it's harvest season and if the harvest doesn't go well, your civilisation is toast.

However, games cheapen out even on things that have nothing to do with gameplay itself. It doesn't change the game in any way to have Aztecs build Aztec pyramids instead of Mayan ones when the game explicitly models separate tilesets. To give painted textures to buildings that were historically painted. Et cetera. All things that many historical games, including Civ, absolutely ignore for no good reason.
Arguing about the details of sandals on a game played from a bird's eye view is obviously just wasting time and resources better spent elsewhere, but not for clearly visible things. Especially ones that drive the narratives of the game (like the unique units or civ leader's clothes).

Exempli gratia:

Would making this Ashoka actually wear Mauryan clothing and sword in any way, shape, or form detract from the gameplay?
He's still be shirtless, he'd still wear a sword, et cetera. He'd just teach people a bit about Ancient Indian fashion that this guy does not. It's just a pastiche of vaguely Indian things that blend everything from Indus Valley civilisation to British Raj into a single, amorphous mess and the culture in question an unchanging monolith that goes something like: "cavemen -> Aryans bring culture -> culture stands in place while all of history happens -> Britain/West makes the clock finally move again." Either that or including a "And Muslims ruin/destroy it" in the middle for plenty of ordinary Indians, rather than outsiders.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Examples are Legion.

As a military historian and a former miniatures painter, I am particularly cognizant of military costume and uniforms and equipment that are imprecise, fantasy, or flat out wrong. It has also bugged me for decades that the absolute high point of military costume for sheer colorfulness, the 17th to 19th centuries, has never been shown by any game in the massive variety of uniforms worn. To my mind, even a hint of this would immeasurably increase the visual appeal of the game, and since the majority of uniforms were nearly identical in cut, could be done largely by simple re-skinning.

That makes me very happy that Civ VII is at least making gestures in that direction . . .

 

[Chiyo]

Yeah, it sure would suck if you learned something.

One of the reasons I only come to this forum when a new Civ game comes out is the elitist arrogance by some members. Somebody has different preferences? He must be unwilling or unable to learn.

While I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about history in Europe and modern time Americas I simply prefer playing with the leaders and civilizations that had the biggest influence on the history of the world and thus are best known. For the US you could have Warren G. Harding as a leader because he did exist and might serve well for a special corruption mechanic but Washington, Lincoln or the Roosevelts are way more interesting to me. And my impression is that that goes for a lot of people. There is a reason why there are many successful games about ancient Rome, Greece or Egypt but non about Aksum. In sport games many people prefer playing as the top players and top teams instead of lesser known they could "learn" about. It is the same principal. So in order to make Civ VII a success you need well known entries. Or to paraphrase your reply: "It sure would suck if you sold something."

 

[Thormodr]

One of the reasons I only come to this forum when a new Civ game comes out is the elitist arrogance by some members. Somebody has different preferences? He must be unwilling or unable to learn.

While I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about history in Europe and modern time Americas I simply prefer playing with the leaders and civilizations that had the biggest influence on the history of the world and thus are best known. For the US you could have Warren G. Harding as a leader because he did exist and might serve well for a special corruption mechanic but Washington, Lincoln or the Roosevelts are way more interesting to me. And my impression is that that goes for a lot of people. There is a reason why there are many successful games about ancient Rome, Greece or Egypt but non about Aksum. In sport games many people prefer playing as the top players and top teams instead of lesser known they could "learn" about. It is the same principal. So in order to make Civ VII a success you need well known entries. Or to paraphrase your reply: "It sure would suck if you sold something."

People have constantly told Firaxis they want more Civs and they want worldwide representation. They are listening.

You are in the minority, sorry.

However, you can always set up your games with only the well known Civs.