History book

[bg2soatob]

Just an idea I had. At the end of the game, whether you win or lose, a short history of the World is shown. This will detail the major happenings in the world starting from the earliest documented times (the invention of writing), until 2050. It will detail the major wars, revolutions, and bold moves by leaders. It will mention WWI, where France, Maya, and America allied against Rome, Grrece, and Carthage. It will detail the mayans' betrayal of the military alliance in making peace with the Romans, and it will mention the clever Germans, who stayed out of the war and profited by having everyone love them (this love remained for 1500 years, and culminated in Germany being elected to the UN). You get the idea...

This history would be a far-better alternative to the move-by-move demonstration that exists in Civ 3. It would allow players to truly feel like they had created a history, and would give them satisfaction in victory as the history book heaps praises at them.

Something like that would also allow players to share their game experiences, by posting their histories online and letting others read the documentation of their exploits.

Opinions?

 

[Darwin420]

It's not a bad idea, but I don't see any easy way to program something like that in... now, if you had a 'journal' function in-game, where the player could jot down important information, then that would be a better solution, IMO, and then have THAT used to create the "history" book... it would also be handy for SGs and other story-telling functions online, especially if it had an 'export to HTML' function.

 

[bg2soatob]

I don't see any easy way to program something like that in...

Actually, I don't think it would be that hard (although I'm not a game designer) if they simply used a sort of mold. Such as:

In the year<YEAR>, the great <GOVERNMENT> of <NATIONALITY> built the <GREATWONDERONE>, the first of the wonders of the ancient world to reach <PLANET>.

You get the idea. Things like that already exist. I don't think it would be that hard for the computer to detect when certain "historical events" happen and fill in blanks to create a paragraph of history... (although of course it would be more complex than the above)

 

[Darwin420]

But that would get waaaay to repetitive, and trying to spice it up will more than likely make it read like a poorly translated foriegn novel... I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would take a decent amount of programming.

However, adding in a journal that can be molded by the player (say, to log certain events automatically - city founding, tech discovered, buildings built, etc), plus have it exportable, would be a much more useful option. Plus, if they added the player-created journal to the end map play-through (optional), it would be almost the same as your history book idea.

 

[Che Guava]

If you had a sim-city like paper, like we were talking about in the national moods/national paper thread, you could maybe have a 'scrapbook' of headlines and major events...I really like the idea though, I am one of those nerds who watches the entire playback of my game when its done...

 

[MacDeepBlue]

I have always thought that more statistics would be cool in the game. I get a lot of joy at seeing when I am leading in certain areas in civ 3, but the one little page is far too few. And what was with the land area in the stats in civ 3, it always seemed way wrong.

I think they should have better statistics during the game. Also, you should be able to name geographical features. You should be able to name wars and then in the statistics you could read little things like how many men died for each side and such. It would also be cool if there were lists of the rankings of all the civs in each category at call (maybe they would not be available until an in game message pops up telling you that so and so has compiled his list of the ten largest nations). And maps would be cool, little mini maps that would show population density and such.

At the end of the game a summary of some of these things could be displayed.

 

[Che Guava]

....I have always thought that more statistics would be cool in the game.....

I got one word for you: Flowcharts! ha! WOu;d that be fun, seeing your productivity/scientific output/etc over time so you could really see which type of government and policies is doing the job!

 

[DoTheMath]

Yes, it would be best if saved in a way that the player could look at later. (Maybe a year later, I might want to look at the journal of my first 3 games etc.)

 

[searcheagle]

I got one word for you: Flowcharts! ha! WOu;d that be fun, seeing your productivity/scientific output/etc over time so you could really see which type of government and policies is doing the job!

I think Flow charts, like what you are talking about, are a good idea. Before I really started figuring out the game, I was playing it like a novice. I didnt realize the effects some of my policies were having. In civ, Its hard to know the effects, If you gave a flow chart, where these sort of things are marked, this difficulty would not remain.

 

[mastertyguy]

I think history book is a good idea. There could be three version : Long one, with more detils, for more information for game report, a medium one, to have a medium one (there has to be a middle way), and a short one.