Less realism!

[Rhye]

Without realism, I won't play. I have no fun with odd inventions

 

[CyberChrist]

The combat calculators use the same # system as the Civ 3 engine.

Unless you go and run your own calculations from Civ 3 and prove they're different.

I am not going to run 100.000 combats just for the benefit of proving myself to you - I did enough of those testing army strengths back at the release of C3C.

Anyway, the Calculator(which IS an excellent tool to estimate outcomes btw) doesn't even support your claim that Civ3 already gives close to only 1 loss out of 100.000 attacks in a ATT 24 vs DEF 2 situation. Unless of course you set up the ATK24 unit as Elite and the DEF2 unit as Conscript in which case it estimates 2 losses out of 100.000 attacks. However if you make the DEF2 Elite and the ATK24 Conscript then it estimates 8.421 losses out of 100.000 attacks.

Just for referenece then estimated chances to loose are:
- 1.996 out of 100.000, if both are Conscript
- 520 out of 100.000, if both are Regular
- 141 out of 100.000, if both are Veteran
- 39 out of 100.000, if both are Elite

Even if seemingly low at Elite vs Elite then it is still way to high if you look closer - surviving can mean being alive with as little as 1 HP left which in turn means that next attack increase losses to 35.501 out of 100.000

Increasing HP of units as you go up in ages does help with them surviving/winning against older units, but does absolutely nothing to the chance of avoiding loosing HPs since that is based purely on ATK vs DEF strengths and number of defenders HPs (number of chances it get). This means that the ATK24 unit will loose at least 1 HP in approx 1 out of 5 attacks which is WAY to often IMHO - and that is the real point I have been trying to get across.

Fiddling with much higher ATK and DEF in addition to HPs certainly helps, but surely a better and more realistic solution could be constructed for Civ4, such as ie. making modern units do more damage to older type units pr. succesfull attack.

 

[Evie]

That'S only if you admit automatically that one HP lost represent X% of the unit destroyed.

To me, it has always seemed more to represent loss in combat efficiency due to a variety of factor : in the modern armor vs spear thread, losing one hp in one combat in five could easily represent mechanical breakdowns and the ilk - tanks are fickle machines, and they will require maintenance once in a while. Losing one HP one battle in five against spear could (and IMHO does) represent that.

 

[Jon Shafer]

I am not going to run 100.000 combats just for the benefit of proving myself to you - I did enough of those testing army strengths back at the release of C3C.

Anyway, the Calculator(which IS an excellent tool to estimate outcomes btw) doesn't even support your claim that Civ3 already gives close to only 1 loss out of 100.000 attacks in a ATT 24 vs DEF 2 situation. Unless of course you set up the ATK24 unit as Elite and the DEF2 unit as Conscript in which case it estimates 2 losses out of 100.000 attacks. However if you make the DEF2 Elite and the ATK24 Conscript then it estimates 8.421 losses out of 100.000 attacks.

Just for referenece then estimated chances to loose are:
- 1.996 out of 100.000, if both are Conscript
- 520 out of 100.000, if both are Regular
- 141 out of 100.000, if both are Veteran
- 39 out of 100.000, if both are Elite

Even if seemingly low at Elite vs Elite then it is still way to high if you look closer - surviving can mean being alive with as little as 1 HP left which in turn means that next attack increase losses to 35.501 out of 100.000

Increasing HP of units as you go up in ages does help with them surviving/winning against older units, but does absolutely nothing to the chance of avoiding loosing HPs since that is based purely on ATK vs DEF strengths and number of defenders HPs (number of chances it get). This means that the ATK24 unit will loose at least 1 HP in approx 1 out of 5 attacks which is WAY to often IMHO - and that is the real point I have been trying to get across.

Fiddling with much higher ATK and DEF in addition to HPs certainly helps, but surely a better and more realistic solution could be constructed for Civ4, such as ie. making modern units do more damage to older type units pr. succesfull attack.

So you're saying that even in the case that the Spear has the best chance, with 520 wins out of 100,000 tries, you have a massive 0.52% chance, aka about a 1 in 200 shot at a Spear killing a Tank.

Doesn't seem like a problem to me, nothing I'm complaining about anyways.

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

Polypheus said:

Before we go on we need to define "realism".

But that does not go far enough. we have to start with realism of what?

None of the detail about particular nations, cultures or civilizations is really relevant to the game. It's nice gloss. So is all the stuff about sherman tanks etc. Bbut it confuses this kind of discussion. The realism that civ needs, and partly has is in the development of communities into civilizations, coping with technology changes, cultural and philosophical changes, scale changes, competition for limited resources, and the influence and rivalry of neighbours in all these areas.

Complexity has little to do with realism in the sense that the less complex the more abstract. but the overall feel can be just as good.

The kind of areas that could do with realism improvements are:
-the tech tree (It should be sufficiently unpredictable to severely discourage a mediaeval society from planning a progression to electronics - because a mediaeval culture would never have concived of such a possibility)
-research (while we are on the subject) (very few groundbreaking developments have been the result of planned research programs which are mostly effective for step improvements and integration projects)
-acquisition of tech capabilities (before I finish with this) (IRL the knowhow for doing things leaks across administrative boundaries, albeit unevenly and sometimes against great resistance, but also research is stimulated by seeing someone else - especially a rival - with a new capability)
-characteristics and attributes (IRL these are acquired through circumstance, including major terrain and weather features, degree and nature of interaction with neighbours, etc.; it would be nice if this was modelled in the game, but the very least that could be done to improve things is to take away the precoded - pre-ordained - attributions so that you only know how your new friend behaves by observation; even better if the so-called civ-specific units were disengaged from the specific civs and rather appeared as a cosequence of some set of circumstances - not sufficiently predictably or reliably to be wholly played for - that occur during play)
-political decay (again IRL, poltical systems have their ups and downs; the benefits of any system in the game should drop off over time forcing some kind of stimulus to be applied in order to sustain the system; for example the benefits of democracy could dwindle down towards other norms while the costs would remain - or even increase; and the more rigid political systems could either decay towards anarchy or the pressure could build up until they explode - Im not sure if these are mutually exclusive ideas or if they could both work)
-changing government (the transition mechanism via prolonged anarchy is somewhat crude and the degree of control available to the player is somewhat god-like; transition could work slowly between two systems with some kind of penalty imposed over the period - perhaps a very slow build to full efficiency of the new psitive characteristics; transitions could be limited to certain combinations - even with different costs - and could be further constrained by other features such as the state of relations with neighbours, size of the civilization, stability of the civilization - e.g. general happiness level -, the balance of knowledge - techs - between overtly military, industrial, scientific, etc.)
-golden age (pet hate) (IRL a golden age is a hindsight thing; suddenly switching on the tap for a fixed number of turns or years is absurd and so is it emanating directly and immediately from some specific event; by all means have a means for boosting production etc., but in some more gradual way and as a consequence of a significant combination of circumstances that include knowledge, recent successes - confidence is obviously a true characterisitc of such high spots - relations with neighbours and the like)
-reduction of tactical features and rejection of most new tactical suggestions(ranged weapons - except, obviously, airborne stuff in the modern era; ambush - hiding up a tree for two years has a problem over the supply of sandwiches and coffee, supply limitations - these are key for days or weeks, not years and the scale of the game dictates that units are in reality an abstract representation of whole infrastructures providing support by whatever abstracted means; dozens of near identical units that in history only featured for the duration of a five or six year war - reduce them to very few; you get the idea?)

A couple of specific items that are often debated:

- rail travel: this is properly represented as unlimited within the rail network. Properly because of the time scale. there are plenty of precedents, one being a boardgame called Hitler's War in which total reallocation of all forces within your territory is allowed each turn. The one problem the rail rule gives is the ease with which seaborne invasions can be repelled. This could be resolved by limiting all units attack capability in the same turn at the end of rail travel.

- spearmen and tanks: what is anomalous about this is not so much the combat result as the possibility of the combat occuring. Beyond a certain point such a mismatch of technologies becomes extremely unlikely IRL - even if there are communities existing with so much earlier technologies still in place, the likelyhood of them meeting in battle against modern weapons is very low.
Just on the other point for a moment, if there was an isolated incident like that, I see nothing wrong with there being, albeit extremely low, a chance of the spears prevailing; I say this because I consider the units not necessarily to represent single people and you could predicate that a unit of spearmen i, say, fifty men and a unit of tanks is, again say, six or three or even just one; against those kind of odds you can at least imagine an incident in which the spearmen prevail by virtue of a combination of stealth and luck; rarely, very rarely but not impossible.
(back to the main story) the game could devise ways of making the existence of very old units less likley. This can be done say by some kind of automatic upgrading (with costs and penalties of course) and backed up by the idea of technologies bleeding across boundaries that I suggested earlier.

Have to stop now (thank goodness you all say). Summoned for tea. I'll have to make spelling corrections later.

Algae

 

[Joselia]

Here's the debate: You want a degree of realism to make the game fun. Example civ1 very limited in graphics at the time fun. Civ2 improved upon that, really fun. Civ3 continued and fun. Now I recently bought Rise of Nations because it looks really realistic. It was fun to play for about 2 days. Then it grew old because of the realism and it didn't have the fun factor that civ series has. Debate closed. You want realism then watch the history channel. A game is simply that a game and what are games meant to be? FUN FUN FUN!

 

[dh_epic]

I think the discussions here have missed the point. Realism is about as inherently good as it is inherently bad. For every example you can cite about reality that is really exciting (war), you can cite an example about reality that would either be too boring (sending your president to the washroom each turn) or too cumbersome (managing your nation's many corporations).

I think the question is what is Civilization's relationship to reality?

- it's inspired by the exciting real events in history
- it's inspired by the exciting POSSIBLE events in history
- it simplifies the passage of time, especially the human life-span

I think the first two will tell you where civ needs to go.

And the third one will prevent you from doing what civ should never do: that is, force you to manage the day to day tedium of an empire, no matter how realistic it may be.

Instead, it should let you focus on the big sweeping choices, the strategies, with multiple paths. (Right now, I'd say there are too few paths, and too much day to day tedium.)

 

[troytheface]

One can make the game more realistic by virtue of better graphics for both the tech tree and the advisors screens...also by realistic (optically) rendered figure heads /units and most of all terrain! In so far as functions i agree with the longbow arguers and more ai alliances that actually work cohesively. Also, if there was some kind of tactical bonus u could get by surrounding ur enemy or striking from different locations (flanking)

 

[jimkirk]

hehe civ 2 had great advisers nuff said

 

[Colonel Kraken]

I think the discussions here have missed the point. Realism is about as inherently good as it is inherently bad. For every example you can cite about reality that is really exciting (war), you can cite an example about reality that would either be too boring (sending your president to the washroom each turn) or too cumbersome (managing your nation's many corporations).

I think the question is what is Civilization's relationship to reality?

- it's inspired by the exciting real events in history
- it's inspired by the exciting POSSIBLE events in history
- it simplifies the passage of time, especially the human life-span

I think the first two will tell you where civ needs to go.

And the third one will prevent you from doing what civ should never do: that is, force you to manage the day to day tedium of an empire, no matter how realistic it may be.

Instead, it should let you focus on the big sweeping choices, the strategies, with multiple paths. (Right now, I'd say there are too few paths, and too much day to day tedium.)

I couldn't have said it better myself! Some of you say you want great gameplay over realism. Duh. Who doesn't? That's like saying I want a clean neighborhood versus smoke spewing factories in my backyard. Who's against a clean neighborhood? Who's against a fun game? It's a straw man argument.

DH points out the truth of the argument exquisitly. I don't think any of us want to put realism in the game for realism's sake. What we do want to do is get a sense that we're running (or watching it unfold) an actual historical (or relatively so) nation/country/empire. Many of us enjoy being immersed in history and being able to relive it, as it were. Not to mimick what occured in real history, but we wish to obtain that epic sense of historical correctness. We wish to, in some small way, to experience a taste of reality --real history.

We want to know what it's like to deal with rebellious subjects and protestors. We want to see our decisions have influence on the wealth or poverty of our citizens. Are our policies making it easy for citizens to become wealthy or middle class? Or, do we run our empire with an iron hand, taking what we need from the people, using it for our own glory and power, and relegating them to a meagor existence. We want to have to weigh the option of "should I have lots of mediocre units or a handful of high quality units". Any numerable amount of historical types of decisions can be brought to bear in a game like this without it being weighty or complicated. It can be fun and realistic to the extent that facilitates our desire to control/oversee a burgeoning empire. These things are not mutually exclusive.

I believe adding or subtracting something from a game exclusively for simplicity or fun's sake leads us to the kinds of problems we have now with the highly oversimplified combat system or any other handful of common player complaints. That's why we hear requests for things like more/better diplomacy because these types of things add to the immersive experience of a great game like Civ.

That's why I believe it's imperative that Firaxis follow a path adding more realism to Civ 4.

 

[wisewood]

Yes, i want the game to be as realistic as it can be...not a simulation tho...

 

[dh_epic]

I guess what I'm saying is let realism motivate the ideas, and let fun be the filter.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think that ADDING realism can actually help cut down on a lot of the micromanagement...

No world leader today has to personally control as many factors as a player does in Civilization.

 

[warpstorm]

I don't think any of us want to put realism in the game for realism's sake.

I disagree with this statement a lot. There are many, many people out there who make this argument. This was the death of both the wargame and the military sim game markets. The customers ad reviewers wanted more and more detail and realism until you couldn't make a fun game under a reasonable budget that would make them happy. (Most of the people I work with came from companies that made those type of games - they don't any more)

I don't want this to happen to Civ.

 

[dh_epic]

I don't want this to happen to Civ.

Agreed. There ARE a lot of people who ask for more detail. I think the generalization, though, is the bad stuff usually has something to do with the passage of time.

- have elections every 4 turns
- have olympics every 4 turns
- it doesn't take 2 years to travel across europe
- it doesn't take 400 years to build a granary
- the economy fluctuates a lot within the span of a decade

Stuff like that adds to the realism without adding to the game. But please, please, please, don't lump all people who like realism into the "realism for realism's sake" category. Some of us deserve a little bit more credit, and have seen a lot more of the ups and downs of game development.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

- have elections every 4 turns
- have olympics every 4 turns
- it doesn't take 2 years to travel across europe
- it doesn't take 400 years to build a granary
- the economy fluctuates a lot within the span of a decade

Yeah... I have to say, I do think that these are sort of the "duds" of the realism issue.

But what one must remember is that some of the factors of realism is not only addition, but also subtraction.

Some things, which I have said elsewhere as well, that should be subtracted from Civ are:

• Using Settlers to build cities
• Player construction of all building improvements
• Workers
• Remove placing citizens to work certain tiles and converting to Scientists etc.

That would cut down on a lot of excess micromanagement.

 

[Colonel Kraken]

Yeah... I have to say, I do think that these are sort of the "duds" of the realism issue.

But what one must remember is that some of the factors of realism is not only addition, but also subtraction.

Some things, which I have said elsewhere as well, that should be subtracted from Civ are:

• Using Settlers to build cities
• Player construction of all building improvements
• Workers
• Remove placing citizens to work certain tiles and converting to Scientists etc.

That would cut down on a lot of excess micromanagement.

Another one on our team, DH! Well, like I've said elsewhere, this would be my dream --to overhaul the old Civ I formula: build settlers, make cities, build improvements, make money/production, squash enemy, make more money, squash more enemy. Rinse, repeat.

Don't get me wrong! The most exciting part of the game is the expansion, gobbling land, and establishing your bourgeoning empire. But there's got to be more to it than that. Something beyond taking the same old, same old formula and dressing it up nice. Let's see something truly new!

--CK

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Another one on our team, DH! Well, like I've said elsewhere, this would be my dream --to overhaul the old Civ I formula: build settlers, make cities, build improvements, make money/production, squash enemy, make more money, squash more enemy. Rinse, repeat.

Don't get me wrong! The most exciting part of the game is the expansion, gobbling land, and establishing your bourgeoning empire. But there's got to be more to it than that. Something beyond taking the same old, same old formula and dressing it up nice. Let's see something truly new!

--CK

I remember at a lunch with one of the old time players at Apolyton, I asked him if he'd played Civ3. He said that indeed he had but that after a week, he'd mastered the formula and he breezed even through Diety.

I barely win on Prince... But that's because I don't play to master the formula, I play to make a good story out of it, and sometimes that means not pushing the AI as absolutely hard as possible. Or so I tell myself...

I mean, everything in the game seems bent ultimately towards developing the next generation of units and a lot of them, when there is, in reality, so much more than that...

 

[Colonel Kraken]

I barely win on Prince... But that's because I don't play to master the formula, I play to make a good story out of it, and sometimes that means not pushing the AI as absolutely hard as possible.

Precisely, precisely, precisely. This is exactly what I do: to make a story out of it. IN FACT, if something bad happens in combat (or any myriad of other unfortunate mishaps --epsecially if I forget to do something) I make up in my mind what could have happened in real life to account for it (e.g. my troops got caught at night in their encampment and became overrun). It might sound stupid, but it's all about the immersion into the game of feeling like you're somehow a part of some kind of cool, historical reality.

I think that's what DH, Aussie, DP II, and the rest of us are really trying to find ways to accomplish, in the end. This is what we mean by reality.

So I say fooey on the title of this thread. I want MORE realism! (of the kind stated above).

--CK

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Precisely, precisely, precisely. This is exactly what I do: to make a story out of it. IN FACT, if something bad happens in combat (or any myriad of other unfortunate mishaps --epsecially if I forget to do something) I make up in my mind what could have happened in real life to account for it (e.g. my troops got caught at night in their encampment and became overrun). It might sound stupid, but it's all about the immersion into the game of feeling like you're somehow a part of some kind of cool, historical reality.

I do that a lot too. I wrote a few stories over at Apolyton based on Civ experiences and I was always trying to find interesting plot lines behind actions in-game.