[NFP] History Simulator or Game: Civ's precarious balancing act

One area where civ out-histories the competition is that in a more historical simulation angle, you would generally have to simulate so many polities that making most of them have unique flavour beyond flat buffs or penalties is prohibitively time consuming. Civ6's approach of fewer, more fleshed out civs allows for civ bonuses and maluses to be much better characterized - though this has fallen into stereotype territory at some times.

I think that ties into how I approach a game of civ - I want to try and get the most out of what makes my civ unique even if it isn't optimal... and also is why I have got more longevity out of civ than a lot of the other games out there. Once you learn the game systems as one civ, there's another which interacts with them in a totally different way. I like that.
 
I play the traits more than I play the people or heritage of the civ. Having both Shaka and Mansa Musa in Civ4 is a way of representing that people in Africa are three dimensional, fully realized tribes. Adding Ethiopia in Civ5, and even more in Civ6, serves that goal.

I can't speak to the case of the Zulu but using the term "tribe" to refer to African empires such as Mali with advanced and intricate governing apparatuses is disingenuous at best and offensive at worst (and frankly carries on the legacy of early colonial assumptions that were marred with racism). Sorry, this is just a pet peeve of mine as a university lecturer who specializes in the Western Sudan.

Now back to the original question:

I agree Civ generally tries to strike a balance but I felt Civ 6 fell very heavily in favor of fun and entertainment. I'm not someone who cares about historical accuracy but I do like to roleplay the civs I am playing as and create a story and that was exceedingly difficult to do in Civ 6 for me because it was hard not to feel like I was playing SimCity the board game. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game but not for the somewhat shallow/non-existent storylines and interactions with the game world. I guess in a way I value immersion more than anything else and I am also a player who would welcome more maluses to help give the AI a chance at winning and be more realistic.

When I sit down for a game of Civ 6 its a very sterile experience for me, I go in literally just to see how insane my yields can become and how dominantly I can crush the AI. There really isn't any story fostering systems in my opinion save perhaps the emergencies. I had a ton of hope for the timeline feature but the way it actually functions (I guess as a consequence of it being tied to era score) doesn't really help develop a narrative. If I knew how to mod i'd see if we could add our own events and type custom dialogue. That way I could really make a story.
 
From my perspective, it seems as though developing a Civ game (or any historical 4X, for that matter) is about striking a balance between four powers: immersion, historical accuracy, strategic depth, and fun/entertainment value.

I would put immersion and strategic depth on curves headed in different direction with the question being How long can they stay in balance. Someone starting the game looks at the tech tree and thinks about how it would be fun to find Horses sometimes, and sometimes thinks about how it would be fun to build a granary. After playing the game a few times you realize you pick Animal Husbandry because the Horse resource might be outside your capital and that effects your second city placement and you don't really need that granary because you use a population for that settler.

I wish I could go back a few years and write a response. I'm not a great player by any measure but after 4 years of playing I'm past the point of immersion. Some of the modes and the Pirates game brought back the fun for a while.

One contradiction in the immersion department about civ 6 - the leaders look and sound great, but i've never pull me in like they should. I think it might be that in FPS adventure games you interact with NPC in an environment and then make a decision. In civ6 it doesn't feel that way. It's one of the reasons MP can be fun. If your moving a settler to a spot they want they say before you found the city.
 
These are things that I think about a lot. My role here is to be the "historical authenticity" person, but recognizing that Civ is its own genre and comes with its own assumptions ("timeless nations/cultures") that are going to at their core be ahistorical. I push for more historicity, but recognizing that the game that results has to be readable, has to still be "civ", has to be balanced, and importantly has to still be fun. I don't think Aztec nukes are a problem at all - even a historical simulation has the possibility for the New World repelling the Europeans and going down its own path. And Civ shakes all this up by having extremely simplified political/economic systems (there is only one actor in your empire, and it's you), a (usually) random world map, and no actors outside of these main timeless players (barbarians and city-states aside). I would love to see alternative tech trees, a more dynamic internal political system (bear in mind that so many "decisions" in history had to do with regular people taking actions that their leaders did not plan for or want, and certainly didn't decide), etc., but these would make the game even more ahistorical, remove a lot of player control, and, most dauntingly, introduce a whole lot more complexity. The Maya and Greece were not unified polities in the same way as Frederick's HRE, and that wasn't the same as the USA. So there's always a tension, but this tension can be productive. Personally, I like how Civ uses language, music, art, etc., to reach towards immersion even as mechanics and assumptions behind balance, gameplay, etc., lean towards the "game" side of things.

Other games do these things differently. Paradox retains some ahistorical assumptions, but moves decisively down the simulation path (throwing the idea of balance, for instance, out of the window - if I start as Ottomans and you start as Brittany...). Humankind makes cultures just a set of buffs and buildings that are chosen each age for their strategic value within the game. (In case you're wondering, yes, Firaxis allows us and encourages us to play and enjoy all the games out there. I absolutely love a lot of the 'competition').

I'm really interested in how you all play, though, and what's important to you all, not just because I work here, but also because I am, like Bactrian, a teacher. I want you to find out a little about history or at least spark some curiosity via the game. Basil talks a lot about Rome in order to get people who aren't familiar with the Byzantines (and further claims to Rome's legacy by people who called themselves Keyser, Kaiser, Tsar, First Consul, etc). Trieu shines a focus on Vietnam in the 2000 years before the American War (for people who assume Vietnam = a genre of American war movie). Ultimately, that opening towards curiosity and learning is what's most important to me, personally. I am going to have a fit about city names or leader outfits and do not care at all about district yields and adjacency bonuses, but I recognize that the latter are really important for the balance and fun parts of things. In that way, Civ isn't going to be able to simulate history, but what history that's there I want to be correct, informative, and, most of all, thought- and question-provoking.

It’s a fair question. For myself, I would say “immersion” is a huge factor; does it feel, in broad strokes like I am guiding the development of a culture through the various challenges of history or does it feel like a game

Civ6 absolutly feels like I am playing a game. Every aspect of it feels like minimaxing. As an example, the government/policy card system. I can freely mix and match various policies, ideals and social structures that in real life would be absolutly dysfunctional or impossible to have in practise together.

It doesnt feel at all like a culture or a government, it feels like a collection of cards.

Serfdom is a good example because the card is so broken; having an economy based on serfs should I guess give you more productive workers, but Oh My God this institution should also come with fairly significant and obvious maluses.

“Whipping” in earlier civs was a way better approach both for immersion AND gameplay because the boost came with significant tradeoffs.
 
I'm really interested in how you all play

I value immersion as well, and I tend to seek to build a well-balanced civ rather than pursue a particular victory in a single-minded fashion. Thus, while I win consistently on Diety, I rarely do so with those ultralow turn counts that some people post about. In general, science victories tend to mesh best with my natural playstyle and I have to make a conscious effort to aim for another one. If I had one single wish for Civ 7 it would be for it to be oriented towards rewarding balanced playstyles rather than those that all-in on a particular victory from Turn 1.
 
Thank you, @Hellenism Salesman this is a really interesting thought and I'm looking forward to the replies. I would like to put a fine point on:
How do we create a historically accurate game without making that game unfun, simple, or immersion breaking?
and I'd answer that by looking at another game that is immersion breaking. The example that comes to mind is Assasins Creed Valhalla. Absolute dreck from a historical perspective. You are a Viking whose antics don't even inconvenience the population! You're just here in England stealing money from churches and improving people's lives. Totally immersion-breaking. Much more so than the historical nits to pick with Civ 6 (Aztec's UU being in the ancient era)
As for the "unfun" aspect, I think that depends on the difficulty and the players' experience level. Civ 6 is a pretty hard game to break into. And this isn't solved by playing on settler because there's a ridiculous number of variables...your empire could collapse by lack of funds, lack of luxuries, lack of "era score" so you lose loyalty, lack of a strategic resource, etc. and some of those things could take many turns to resolve or that the player should have started working on 32 turns ago.
I don't think that "simple" is an issue at all with this series. What is the simplest version, maybe "Civilization Revolution"? That was pretty fun! Too simple would be a game where you couldn't play every civ with a different style. It would be too simple if you, for example, could only hope to win playing France in a cultural victory or Rome with domination. Some are easier than others but it's a complex enough game that you have a chance to do anything with anyone (except Congo/Religion but that's not my point). It's complex enough that you can understand your strengths and weaknesses and try to overcome your disadvantages because you have a shot at winning if you play your cards right.
If I would say Civ 6 is weak on the "unfun, simple, or immersion breaking" the biggest reason why it's not a "perfect 4x game" if there is such a thing is in the "unfun" for new players. Would be nice to turn off a feature or two for beginners until they get the hang of it. Having the world congress or a certain number of luxury items isn't essential to playing the game and it might be nice to be able to switch that off while you get the hang of the core gameplay.
 
In my case, I'm playing to build a story most of the time. To make consistent choices, to have greater immersion. I try to get close the civ historically (choosing appropriate religion, city names, etc.). This can lead to some reading of the Civilopedia to learn about it. For the fun part, I hunt Steam achievements. Some are repetitive but many are also interesting and can lead to some research on what they mean.

Would be nice to turn off a feature or two for beginners until they get the hang of it.
Well you can disable the expansion packs and a lot of things will become simpler.
 
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Very interesting discussion, but if I may, I'd like to comment a little off from the Original "History Simulator versus Game" postulate.

There have been several thread lately on the character and effectiveness of the Game versus Whatever or 4X nature of the game. I suggest that they are all beside the point. The real character of Civ the Series is not 4X, it is GAPE:

Game: Another way of asking the primary question, Is It Fun To Play? Without this, the game as a construct is Dead, only to be accessed by people paid to do so (computer games as Work) or people who get some strange glow from doing unpleasant things for Fun (computer games as Masochism). The reason I didn't use the mnemonic PAGE is that the Game as Fun To Play is absolutely Fundamental: without that factor, nothing else matters in the end.

Aesthetic: Part of the Fun To Play Question, Does it Look Good? This is by no means Unimportant in recreational pastimes - if it were a trivial question there would be no reason for the constant search for better graphics in games and better computers to run them on. Nor is this unique to computer gaming: a large part of the attraction of miniatures gaming is the visual appearance of miniatures and the miniature terrain. There's a reason the Humankind game has gotten a lot of comments on its terrain: it's bloody gorgeous, and games like it and Anno 1800 and Settlers 6 are fun to play on because you are playing on maps that are aesthetically pleasing.
And part of the Aesthetics, I would argue, is that they are also visually Authentic: they look like Real Terrain in games that purport to recreate real 'historical' situations - or at least, as real as a computer can render them and what we perceive (correctly or not) as what the historical setting looked like: playing on a map that does not look like what we think ancient Athens and surrounding Attica looked like makes it very, very hard to 'Immerse" ourselves in playing Pericles or the Spirit of Classical Greece or whatever the game is trying to present.

Puzzle. Does the game present intellectual challenges? In other words, is it Not Dull from start to finish? Does it require us to exert just a bit of mental effort to solve, create, innovate, avoid, dodge, overcome or crush obstacles and events and elements in the game. If any game does not do this to some extent, then it is just a pretty screen at best, and boring at worst - and, again, will only be played as a Job or an exercise to see How Much You Can Stand before you stagger away from the computer wondering how you will ever retrieve those lost hours or minutes.

Engage. Collecting all of the above and adding to them that "One More Turn" factor: that combination of Fun, good-looking, problem-presenting elements that makes the game reach out and grab you and not let go. The other word is "Immersion", but if you are not intellectually and aesthetically Engaged then Immersion is just another word for Drown.

Whether any of this includes History, or elements of History, or historical veneer, is going to always be completely personal and arbitrary: each of us has a different view of what parts and how much of history we want in our game. For some of us, a light salty sprinkle across the top will do, while others want a thick and deep soup in which to dive (if you've been on these Forums for any length of time, you should have a pretty good idea of my preference: Bring On The Soup Silo!)

And this question includes Fantasy. All "history" includes Fantasy - things imagined, or speculative, or inferred - because short of the invention of Harrison's Vremetron we will never Know all of history. It was aptly said that "You can no more write a history of a battle than you can write a history of a Ball" - with the added point that almost everyone survives a Ball to tell their story, while almost by definition, a certain percentage of the participants do not survive a battle to tell theirs. History is full of gaps and always will be. So part of the above dichotomy of History versus Game is How Much and What Kind of Fantasy is/will be in the game as well, and that's another question that has intensely personal and arbitrary answers for each gamer or potential gamer.
 
Well, I've had a lot of fun with the game, and I'm still having fun with it. However, I wish the game took it's historical theme a little more seriously. Accuracy isn't possible but they could have done a better job of setting up a historical atmosphere. They made them game look cute when it could have looked epic. It makes me wonder if maybe we weren't better off with the minimal graphics of previous iterations because they left room for our imagination to fill in the gaps.
 
Civilisation 6 is in almost every way a computerised board game. This is not a criticism; it is a large part of what makes it so fun and replayable - but not necessarily for everyone. If you go into this game looking for a historical strategy type experience, you will be left wanting. If you want to replicate a strategy board game experience with more complexity and in an electronic format, then this is for you.

Exactly so.
There is nothing historically accurate about the game whatsoever. Nada, Zilch, Zip.
Okay some of the 'leaders' are accurate (ish) but that is all she wrote (and I can argue against a lot of these that should have better choices too but should probably not either name them or my reasons as the post would get deleted these days)
It's a fun empire building game & little else
 
Its a video game and thats good thing only.
Made for people having fun.
Sure it takes stuff from older board wargames and simplifies them, but that is what draws players in every 4X game so far.
 
Exactly so.
There is nothing historically accurate about the game whatsoever. Nada, Zilch, Zip.
Okay some of the 'leaders' are accurate (ish) but that is all she wrote (and I can argue against a lot of these that should have better choices too but should probably not either name them or my reasons as the post would get deleted these days)
It's a fun empire building game & little else

This is by far the least immersive game in the series

Including the original board game

Way too many things that outright contradict actual history, often when also being terrible game mechanics

Its a video game and thats good thing only.
Made for people having fun.
Sure it takes stuff from older board wargames and simplifies them, but that is what draws players in every 4X game so far.

Immersion or Game is not a binary choice, neither is it mutually exclusive.
 
Civ 6 is not a hardcore history simulation, it is a game where you can pretend to lead a civilization, so more simulation-lite. It is very addictive though...
 
Civ 6 is not a hardcore history simulation, it is a game where you can pretend to lead a civilization, so more simulation-lite. It is very addictive though...

Its not even that. I mean they didn’t even get rivers or trade routes right
 
Its not even that. I mean they didn’t even get rivers or trade routes right

Not sure what you mean, everything in Civ is dumbed down, simplified or abstract. The important thing is that the effect is correct on a higher level in terms of the impact on a civilization over a long period.

So rivers provide fresh water for cities and crops and a combat bonus in battles which is fine. Trade boosts your economy with goods and cash which again is correct on a macroeconomic level.
 
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Not sure what you mean, everything in Civ is dumbed down, simplified or abstract. The important thing is that the effect is correct on a higher level in terms of the impact on a civilization over a long period.

So rivers provide fresh water for cities and crops and a combat bonus in battles which is fine. Trade boosts your economy with goods and cash which again is correct on a macroeconomic level.

Yeah, there's always pieces that are a-historical. I miss the old way irrigation worked where you could only farm next to a river until later on, but I understand the current (simplified) version. Or the old setup where tiles next to rivers gave +1 gold, whereas the current "trade" bonus on rivers is simply a bonus to commerce hubs.

I think overall, the game aspects need to win out, since we are playing a game, we're not playing a history simulator. But I think for the game to truly win, you need to make sure that the historical game pieces make some sense. And I do think a lot of the aspects of the current game help - for example, the Pyramids you are guaranteed in civ 6 to be in a desert. District placement at least nominally has you lay out your cities in a specific way. And the fact that many leader bonuses are powerful means I do tend to play a more aggressive Aztec game vs a more passive game with a different leader without the combat bonuses.

I do think it needs a little more uniqueness. Even if it's not necessarily historical, I would like a setup where if my civ starts near a ton of horses or cattle, we will develop differently than the civ that settles in that fertile floodplain. The "God of the Open Sky" pantheon is a little too weak of a bonus to change my system and setup around, and would love to see different ways to handle that. Like, I love how Desert Folklore or Dance of the Aurora will completely change your (holy site) district placement, I would really like there to be other ways to better "play the map", especially for pieces that are not directly tied to a civ. Like, it's annoying that all civs science is essentially based on the same Astronomy+Biology (ie. mountain adjacencies, jungle adjacency, reef+geotherms for campuses). How about if as my civ is developing, if we are in lands with a ton of animals, our science research becomes much more about animals? Or maybe our Canadian scientists learn more from discovering the tundra and the aurora rather than hacking through jungles?

And I think if you can have more methods to customize your empire, and differentiate between the civs, that will lead to a more immersive experience. Will it be more historical? Not necessarily. But if I can craft my own story from my game, I think that's more important on the whole.
 
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Blatantly necroing this thread with (more than likely) Civ VII on the horizon. Now the question becomes, what direction do you want to see the next iteration go in?
 
I just wish Firaxis could at least get the names and visuals of leaders, units, infrastructure, and capital cities correct. I don't expect the mechanics of the game to be historically accurate, but inconsequential things like that should be the bare minimum in my opinion.
 
Think about it. To make the game historical, you would need to merge Old World, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron, and you still would not have quite covered the whole period. Can you imagine that working?
 
Think about it. To make the game historical, you would need to merge Old World, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron, and you still would not have quite covered the whole period. Can you imagine that working?

I see too many posters making the same false assumption: that there is a hard Historical Versus Game dichotomy.
Not So.
Whether a game is Historical or not depends on your sense of history. The more history you know, the more any game or recreation has to work to appear 'historically accurate' to you. The other side of that is the more 'history' you know that is inaccurate the less you will think an accurate historical rendering is Historical.
Everything, always, has to match your perceptions, and by the time anyone is old enough to play a computer game like this one, they carry with them a lot of pre-formed perceptions that have to be satisfied.

NO GAME or anything else will match all those perceptions.

But any opposition between Historical and Playable will be on a sliding scale with a distinct and different point on that scale for each and every one of us. I will put up with a lot of mediocre gameplay to satisfy my interest in history. You may have no interest in the history other than as background noise while interesting play is immersive to you.
To some extent, the game has to satisfy both of us - at least somewhat. It is that constant set of compromises that is Game Design at its most basic.

So, the better expression of your statement is that:
"To make the game more historically accurate, you would need to merge elements of Old World, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron - and Settlers 6, Pharaoh, Caesar, Rise of the Middle Kingdom, and every other game with a semi-historical background to it, and you would still, inevitably, leave something out that is of Utmost Importance to someone."

"Leave out the Defenestration of Prague and it will never sell in the Czech Republic!"

- Or something similar: we've all seen posts like that one on these Forums about almost every in-game or proposed in-game mechanic or device: all such decisions, of all kinds, are some form of compromise between All Inclusive Historical - which is both Impossible* and Unplayable, and Purely Fantasy/Imaginary, which is both Chaotic and also Impossible to Play.

- Not that there isn't someone out there who is willing to try.

* I Know Whereof I Speak: I have spent the past 8 years working on a book covering the main aspects of the Battle of Moscow in October 1941 - with unprecedented access to Soviet and German archives from both sides and memoir and other materials from both Germany and Russia, and there are still things that we don't know about what happened - and never will know short of Resurrecting the Dead from the battlefields and questioning them.

- And that's one incident in one fraction of the planet's surface for one month out of 6000 years. Completely Historical is as much Fantasy as History: the best any human construct can do is, like Diodorus of Sicily, present a Library of History that includes as much of the Neat Stuff as he could find, that he thought was important. And, in Game Terms, have enough people agree with him that they will buy it and want to play it!
 
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