Historical Immersion Factor

[Roxlimn]

JLoZeppeli:

You're essentially asking for a brand new Religion system. Given how many new systems are already in the game, I'm not sure its wise to stack another just yet before the basics are nailed. Civ V is like Civ III in this regard - another game in which ICS was also overlooked in design.

As for the AI... ...I imagine it also has to do with who was willing to create a game based on what was going to be a stupidly minor part of Civ. Combat has traditionally always been a throwaway part of Civ. I imagine it's a thankless job. Jon makes combat more complex and interesting, so he gets his baby. The systems are actually pretty well designed - it just needs tweaking and AI work, something which all Civ combat has always been short on.

For instance, if the Civ IV combat AI were actually smart, it wouldn't step into the range of your SoD, but wait for your SoD to grant it first turn fire. However, it just frequently allows you to fire and decimate it freely, even on the higher settings.

 

[katipunero]

A basic belief system yes.. religion no.. people seem confused about what religion is

indeed, religion and spirituality are two different things. in a nutshell, when we talk about religion we talk about persistent rituals; we talk about a hierarchical structure from grand priest to the lowly believer; we talk about organized means for self-perpetuation and self-propagation through proselytism and the giving of tithes (familiar?); we talk about tenets, doctrines and fundamental truths; we talk about a false sense of community and shared attributes across cultures thereby espousing an Us v. Them mentality, an othering, the exotic, the neighbor infidel and various terms for apostasy, and so on.

Spirituality, on the other hand, is enjoyed and experience in various forms and ways, for instance through yoga, meditation, a marathon run, a basic commune with nature, taekwondo, doing well on an exam and/or attaching particular significance to a shiny stone you picked up while pacing along an empty highway.

 

[Peregrine]

YES, I AM asking for a new religious system. A new release should take existing systems and IMPROVE them . . . to make them better. More fun. More realistic. Programming these things wouldn't be that difficult. It does, however, require some flexibility of mind and historical knowledge. If improving systems is NOT what a new game version should be doing, then what on earth SHOULD it be doing? Apparently, the answer is eliminating systems to make the version less enjoyable, less accurate, and less detailed. We HAVE the computing power to make these systems and make them well. What possible motivation is there to remove them totally? The logic here escapes me completely. If someone wants a simple, stupid game, aren't there already enough of those out there in the marketplace?

If the basics weren't "nailed," whose fault is that? Sure isn't mine or any other civ player. It's the unarguable consquence of a failed design. I created CivII scenarios for years. I tested and tested and tested. Tweaked and tweaked. AFAIAC, it had to work perfectly. If it didn't, no EXCUSE would be sufficient to ward off criticism.

Yes, ICS was overlooked in design. No excuse is sufficient to ward off criticism. ESPECIALLY because this has been a serious flaw since CivII. CIV did away with it. Progress. CiV brought it back. Regression . . . and incompetence. (Not to mention consumer exploitation and dissatisfaction.)

Let me get this straight, because I'm simply astonished by that statement--combat is a "stupidly minor" game component?!? Really? I'd refute this, but don't frankly know even where to begin. If the system itself doesn't accurately model historical conflict, it's ok to simply throw away the whole idea? Is that REALLY what you're claiming? Seems to me if the system(s) don't accurately model (or mimic) historical conflict, the solution is to IMPROVE, not simply throw it away in favor of a tactical, hex-based system that is entirely inapplicable to a world-size civ game.

It needn't be a "thankless job" if someone were to come up with a combat system that functioned smoothly and retained its historical accuracy. Easy? no. Simple? no. But then, we're PAYING for something exceptional, and if we're not . . . the ramifications here are astoundingly bad for the future of the Civ franchise. In no sense should any civ version be "just another PC game." It SHOULD be exceptional. Its success is built on exactly that premise and reputation.

No. It is not "well-designed." Even the most ardent supporters on this site candidly admit that the combat system is a joke. Blaming it solely on the ineffective AI doesn't excuse this glaring flaw. The 1upt AND the AI that is SUPPOSED to be able to function within this system are tied together. IF the AI couldn't function well, this should have been caught in the earliest stages of testing. That it wasn't continues to amaze me. "Tweaking and AI work" 1.) should have been done well prior to release, and 2.) no, these things aren't likely to be "fixed."

I won't claim the SoD was a perfect system. It wasn't. But it was far better, in terms of modeling historical conflict, than 1upt. Add to that the fact that SoD is NOT the only way to wage war in CIV. If one has a mind to do so (in both senses,) there are alternatives. The CIV AI and most players use a SoD. Therefore, there is no other way to conduct warfare in CIV. Can you see the error of the last statement? If you can't, then perhaps you should try shooters instead. Or hidden object games. Those don't really require too much taxing thought.

 

[polypheus]

One thing I would say is that for me, the feeling of "historical immersion" is based on how a Civ game models the big picture.

If we "zoomed-in" on the big picture then of course we'll see lots of flaws. Still the big picture should plausible resemble human history albeit on a entirely different world and starting from scratch but using the same driving forces as our history. IOW, how the civs individually develop and expand and how Civs within and game interact and how the history of that Civ game develops should broadly resemble plausible alternative history.

Trade and Economics, Diplomacy, Religion, Politics and their interplay, these are the major driving forces of history. I would say vanilla Civ4 has more of these elements and models them better (even if flawed) overall whereas Civ5 either doesn't mode them or models them very crudely or poorly.

If I were to judge my feeling of historical immersion by analogy with the detail and quality of a personal portrait, I would say that:
1) Civ4 BTS - ASCII portrait. You look at the whole picture you can make out the face but look closer and you see the ASCII characters
2) Civ4 BTS with mods like LoR, RoM, etc - low resolution but pixel art rather than ASCII art

3) Civ5 now - extremely crude ASCII art that you can "sort of" see the face but barely if at all

IMHO

Example of what I mean:

Civ4: Due to good mechanics, you wanted to build cities close together and develop them more slowly and have more well developed cities. I felt more like how real nations developed.

Civ5: Due to reversion to Civ3 mechanics, you are encouraged to go ICS and build lots of small cities all over the map where you are discouraged from developing them due to stupid Shafer rating system (err I mean global happiness).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

. in a nutshell, when we talk about religion we talk about persistent rituals; we talk about a hierarchical structure from grand priest to the lowly believer; we talk about organized means for self-perpetuation and self-propagation through proselytism and the giving of tithes (familiar?); we talk about tenets, doctrines and fundamental truths; we talk about a false sense of community and shared attributes across cultures thereby espousing an Us v. Them mentality, an othering, the exotic, the neighbor infidel and various terms for apostasy, and so on.

Well the issue wasn't religion v.spitituality... but all those aspects are in Civ V.

Piety, Theocracy->helps provide more order for the empire, so it can control more population

Temple/Monastery Culture, Mandate of Heaven Culture, Free Religion->spreads influence of the empire, also acts to change and organize society (Social Policies)

Organized Religion, Reformation->helps motivate and make people productive

 

[jjkrause84]

There are religious-themed improvements....but no 'religion' as such

 

[polypheus]

Yes, ICS was overlooked in design. No excuse is sufficient to ward off criticism. ESPECIALLY because this has been a serious flaw since CivII. CIV did away with it. Progress. CiV brought it back. Regression . . . and incompetence. (Not to mention consumer exploitation and dissatisfaction.)

The thing about ICS that is so frustrating is that Civ4 more or less solved this problem. There you had city maintenance only (no building cost) with additional costs with distance to capital. This made the gamey and ahistorical ICS stuff from Civ3 now gone. In this setup, a balanced and slower expansion and a few well developed, close cities was the way to go. This was better for both historical immersion reasons and better for gamplay as well!

Instead Shafer throws out what worked in Civ4 and goes backwards to the broken Civ3 system and we are back to ICS! So we have the well known ICS problem of Civ3 which was solved in Civ4 and we are going back to Civ3's model and re-introducing an already fixed problem!

 

[JudgeDeath]

I think you greatly underestimate the religiosity of mankind (especially Europeans during and after the Reformation) and also suffer somewhat from "presentism"....the idea that people have always thought as people think today. This is a very poor way of looking at history, in my opinion.

Not at all, you are confusing the religious fervour of the masses (their opiate if you know your Marx), with the self-serving behaviour of the rulers (although there are some examples of where the ruler is also infected - mostly they come to a bad end).

The masses fight. To the leaders go the spoils. Still true today.

 

[jjkrause84]

Not at all, you are confusing the religious fervour of the masses (their opiate if you know your Marx), with the self-serving behaviour of the rulers (although there are some examples of where the ruler is also infected - mostly they come to a bad end).

The masses fight. To the leaders go the spoils. Still true today.

I'm not at all confusing religious fervour of the masses w/ the feeling of their 'self-serving' leaders (a concept which, interestingly, begs the question of where the dividing line between leaders and 'the masses' is).

If we stick to the 30 Years War, for example (I'm giving a lecture on warfare in the Early Modern period on monday so it's fresh in my mind) there are leaders who are not only engaging in the war for secular reasons but doing so quite openly like Gustavus Adolphus. Elizabeth I was also notably ambivalent towards religious issues. The main Catholic leaders (Phillip III, Ferdinand II etc.), I would argue see things in a much more religious light and did seriously worry about the rise of Protestantism. Yes, part of their worry dealt with the real-world implications that it might have for Catholic empires but there was also a confessional aspect to it. Indeed, if there was NOT a confessional aspect to their behaviours would there not have been more instances of Catholic on Catholic warfare in the 30 Years War?

Now if we tackle the truly interesting question of when an individual is to be counted as leader or one of the masses....

Look at the Defenestration of Prague in 1618. Are the Catholic regents responsible for selling crown lands to other Catholics acting on religious grounds or no? The argument can be made that they want to empower people that will side with them in any future disputes but surely they could 'buy' Protestants as easy as they could Catholics, no? If not, then why? If so, then why did they not buy off Protestants? Were these Bohemian regents leaders (they were certainly powerful) or were they part of the masses? If their classification in one or the other category will define their views of religion and religion's importance in their lives I think it is important to decide.....


Now, I think I've been unfair up to now (or at the very least, unclear). I would never argue that religion was the ONLY reason that leaders did something. Humans are complex animals and hardly any decision (certanily not decisions by state leaders) is made for a single purpose and for the attainment a single goal. Religion must be reckoned with as being at least part of the decision-making process for most world leaders throughout history (and even to an extent today....).

 

[JLoZeppeli]

JLoZeppeli:

You're essentially asking for a brand new Religion system. Given how many new systems are already in the game, I'm not sure its wise to stack another just yet before the basics are nailed. Civ V is like Civ III in this regard - another game in which ICS was also overlooked in design.

As for the AI... ...I imagine it also has to do with who was willing to create a game based on what was going to be a stupidly minor part of Civ. Combat has traditionally always been a throwaway part of Civ. I imagine it's a thankless job. Jon makes combat more complex and interesting, so he gets his baby. The systems are actually pretty well designed - it just needs tweaking and AI work, something which all Civ combat has always been short on.

For instance, if the Civ IV combat AI were actually smart, it wouldn't step into the range of your SoD, but wait for your SoD to grant it first turn fire. However, it just frequently allows you to fire and decimate it freely, even on the higher settings.

I think it's obvious that now is impossble to bring back religion without a new expansion, so i'll wait hoping that it will be in the next Civ V WTF expansion...

Combat perhaps is impossible to be fixed, if we look at the past is very clear, as you told me, the poor skills always showed by Firaxis in that matter (and that's a big problem, because war is more important now than in the past)... So i hope in a more simple army system, based on a Call to Power design, that the idiotic Ai they delivered could grasp with a bit of work on it... Not stack, but not an uncontrollable 1UPT.

If not, i think that we can claim the game without any doubt the greatest failure in the franchise.

Not at all, you are confusing the religious fervour of the masses (their opiate if you know your Marx), with the self-serving behaviour of the rulers (although there are some examples of where the ruler is also infected - mostly they come to a bad end).

The masses fight. To the leaders go the spoils. Still true today.

As always reading books is better than watching TV shows. Marx stated that religion was a part of the superstructure absolutely needed for the coesion of society. That superstructure is destined for transformation or to disappear in the moment that the comunist theory was ready to be realized.... Non opium as a drug used to cloud the minds, but as a dependence... The arguing that he had with Feuerbach is a good way to clear his position.

 

[Ymir9]

I've found I can significantly increase historical immersion by playing on an Earth map with pre-placed start locations and resources. It's a whole different game when playing on real geography. Strangely enough I think Civ V is really well-suited to this kind of play, and a lot of the issues I have with it go away.

 

[JudgeDeath]

I don't watch TV. And dependence is exactly what I'm talking about - the rulers manipulated that dependence for their own ends.

 

[jjkrause84]

JLoZeppeli.....

Looks like we're not gonna win here.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

I' m truly sorry, because as me you are an historian (i'm an archeologist, but our works are interwined).

When people refuse any scientific reason is like the Church (how ironic!) refusing Galilei's theories about the Earth movement around the sun...

How we can bring them to reason? I don't know... When someone think of dependence as drug addiction and not as a child dependent from a mother....

The rulers manipulated the dependence... The rulers, at most, used to form alliances with religious powers for they own gain, but "manipulated" is a little overboard: maybe when the Pope went in Avignone, but it was an act of brute force condamned from all other countries...

When the religion had a power to influence decision or to wage war itself, maybe manipulation is more a matter of religion over rulers, than the opposite...

 

[troytheface]

while i would agree that most that like the history channel and the idea of mimicking certain aspects, i fail to see how Civ5 is less immersive then the others

(except for like footprints when the unit moves- and the magic change into boats thing)

what i dislike is the over reach of attempting to do so - like this double unique unit thing
1 leader, 1 unique unit - keep it simple (unique- "one of a kind" - oh ,so lets have two of a kind then ?)

roads with cost was a great idea. no more roads all over the place for the hell of it- roads are expensive to build and maintain

and the unique stuff should really be unique. The "foreign legion" was a great addition

they could really hammer in more iconic imagery, trenches, machine guns, bi planes, etc.
An infantry or cavalry unique thing don't look all that much different - they need to really stand out

the evidence is clear

 

[Biz_]

imo it's not important at all for civ. the only reason it's useful is to reduce the learning curve. it's much easier to wrap your head around knights, libraries, and archers than their equivalents in a game set in some fantasy or scifi universe

civ does not tell a story. it's a start from scratch 4x game, not a situational campaign so balance takes precedence over historical accuracy. for me, civ is more like a board game, not an immersive interactive experience.

i think historical immersion plays a much bigger role for more fluid games with fully developed environments and people and stories. in those games you see people walk around, not hop 1 tile every turn. civ has a randomly generated map where playing entirely in strategic view is functionally equivalent to the normal game.

what might be useful and possible is more developed diplomacy and environments so you at least feel like you're leading an empire with armies even if those are just imaginary

 

[troytheface]

they actually came closer to it by the above definition

the leaders moving around and yapping in their language

i would have fig'd a rome total war battle set up and a tactical view then with diplomacy an Oblivion-like "your in a tent or whatever looking at a map and talking to Oda or something and the dialogue is more abitrary"

so they kinda came close to what i would have aimed for except they can't do the arbitrary thing

they came close because they unwittingly stumbled on what all games should aspire to achieve which is the 2d over the 3d via scene as content rather then just adding more crap

 

[polypheus]

while i would agree that most that like the history channel and the idea of mimicking certain aspects, i fail to see how Civ5 is less immersive then the others

I've already explained in several posts especially Post #84. Civ5 is less immersive from an overall big picture POV. The way Civ4 nations develop, their interactions with each other, the politics, economics, the more refined game mechanics, etc. just the overall picture. You are talking about immersion of details. But I am talking about something else entirely, namely the immersion of the big picture. This should be extremely clear if we are not only talking about Civ4 but Civ4BTS with mods like LoR, RoM/AND etc.

Note that I am not talking about immersion in the sense of fine details or graphics or whatever. I am talking about overall game mechanics and whether they end up creating a game of Civ that "feels" overall, in a broad way, to be historically plausible. And in that sense, Civ4BTS:LoR or RoM/MOD clearly blow Civ5 vanilla out of the water. Those mods especially made you feel the history of your Civ world and that is what I'm talking about.

Even Civ4 vanilla, despite its flaws, still looked somewhat like history in the making in an overall broad sense. Civ5 looks like just a strategy game with factions and some crude and arbitrary rules that make less sense overall compared to Civ4. I'm not going to say that Civ5 has as low of a historical immersion factor as say chess or RISK. But it certainly is lower than Civ4 and certainly much much lower than some of Civ4's best historically based mods. That is IMHO.

 

[Roxlimn]

The thing about ICS that is so frustrating is that Civ4 more or less solved this problem. There you had city maintenance only (no building cost) with additional costs with distance to capital. This made the gamey and ahistorical ICS stuff from Civ3 now gone. In this setup, a balanced and slower expansion and a few well developed, close cities was the way to go. This was better for both historical immersion reasons and better for gamplay as well!

Instead Shafer throws out what worked in Civ4 and goes backwards to the broken Civ3 system and we are back to ICS! So we have the well known ICS problem of Civ3 which was solved in Civ4 and we are going back to Civ3's model and re-introducing an already fixed problem!

ICS is possible in Civ IV. If you can't ICS in Civ, then you're not ICSing right. The difference is that until latter eras of the game, there was no incentive to make more cities when less cities was more efficient.

This is a perspective difference. I happen to like ICS, and I want ICS to be a viable alternative. To be fair, NOT doing ICS is perfectly viable in Civ V. It just so happens that for some reason, people who claim to be playing the game for historical immersion get bothered by more powerful strategies that are aimed at winning the game no matter what. I don't get how that is.

It's not like normal Civ play is totally unplayable.

Note that I am not talking about immersion in the sense of fine details or graphics or whatever. I am talking about overall game mechanics and whether they end up creating a game of Civ that "feels" overall, in a broad way, to be historically plausible. And in that sense, Civ4BTS:LoR or RoM/MOD clearly blow Civ5 vanilla out of the water. Those mods especially made you feel the history of your Civ world and that is what I'm talking about.

I have played a lot of Civ and hundreds of hours of Civ IV. I have never played those mods and have interest in playing those mods.

Mods that put too much attention to detail to create a thicker veneer of "realism" in Civ IV I think miss the fundamental point of the game. The game concept is already kind of ridiculous as it is. I don't need to go down Uncanny Valley even deeper than I already am.

JLoZeppeli:

War is not more important in Civ V than in Civ IV. It just happens to be somewhat more interesting. I still don't engage in it that much. I still don't like domination wins.

You can still win without engaging in war. You can still win without aggressively attacking your neighbors. War is still an easy way to win over an otherwise superior AI.

At its current state, I do not think of Civ V as being any kind of failure. I like it just fine, thank you. I like some aspects of it better than Civ IV. The combat, especially is more interesting this way. SoDs are just... ...I can't go back. Really, I can't.

 

[Syntax Error]

For me, part of the draw of Civ (new player here) is not actual historical representation, but the potential for anachronisms (which, by extension, means I like to build my own version of world history. As Brentalfloss put it, 'JEWISH NAZIS!'). That, and seeing horsemen with sticks trying to put a dent on my GIANT WALKING DEATH ON TWO LEGS never gets old. In the 1900's, even.

That said, I'd love it if the AI weren't sociopathic little children (I know I'm beating a dead horse with this one, but still). Greedy bastards want everything I have on top of a peace treaty during a war. A war where I'M WINNING.