Make the game more historically accurate!!

[homeyg]

This has probably been mentioned about 100,000,000,000 times, but instead of adding things here and there just making gameplay wierder, why don't they try and make the game reflect more upon the timeframe of our history or at least make it more realistic. An example of an unrealistic situation in CivIII: A warrior moves once every 50 years. They should either give units way more movement points (doesn't nessecarily mean they are fast units or can withdraw), or they should make the turns a smaller 'real time' period. Regarding turns, the time:turn ratio is way too broad. It would seem alot more realistic if you could accomplish alot more in 50 years than just building a warrior or moving a worker. I just don't believe that back then it took 50 years to gather up a group of men to form a 'warrior'. Here's an example of a unrealistic historical situation: 800 AD Industrial Ages. There are several ways to solve this. Lessen the amount of turns the game lasts at higher difficulties. Don't give the AI such an extreme trade bonus.

Anyone have any other suggestions about how to make the game more realistic and relfecting our real history? I just don't see this type of thing discussed very often.

 

[Dida]

No I am happy with the time line.
It doesn't take a warrior 500 years to move a single square, it takes him 1 turn to move a square.
Understand that the game is measured in turns, hence turn based game, not year based.
It can take 1000 years, or 500 or 2000 for that matter, who cares, as long as the game is fun to play.

The game need to be realistic to a certain degree so that the player can relate to it, but it need not be completely realistic. In fact, I feel the game is realistic enough, we should work on other featurs that improve the game rather than making it seem like a history simulation.

Go read your history textbook if you want to learn about history, play Civ if you want to have fun.

 

[homeyg]

Originally posted by Dida
No I am happy with the time line.
It doesn't take a warrior 500 years to move a single square, it takes him 1 turn to move a square.
Understand that the game is measured in turns, hence turn based game, not year based.
It can take 1000 years, or 500 or 2000 for that matter, who cares, as long as the game is fun to play.

I didn't say 50000 years, I said 50. The game is fun to play, but I'm talking about how each turn represents a certain number of years. The game might be even more fun to play if the adjust some things...

 

[Dida]

How are they going to adjust it?? Should they shorten the turns in the BC's to 1 year a turn?? It will still be unrealistic as it doesn't take a warrior 1 year to move 100 miles. And yes, it will make the game last about 6000 turns, which no one will be able to ever finish.

 

[Evie]

It doesn't take a warrior 50 years to move a square. But in ancient time, I tend to think the primitive units (warriors, etc) actually represent more like wandering nomads of your civ - not an organized military force.

So they start traveling, wandering without much aim, stopping for a (long) while in this or that region, traveling again. Once in a while one of them meet one of your guys and report on everything they found, etc.

That's what the early units represent for me.

If you gave the other (actual military) units (ie, spear, sword, etc) increased movement, then you would have to balance it out by preventing them from being more than X square away from civilized land (ie, controled by a player) to prevent early armies from using their mobility for fast strikes halfway across the world.

 

[rcoutme]

In my thinking, the movements of the units represent different timelines from the game. Thus you get:

War between two nations does not last 18 centuries! The movement of the armies represents what the war (if it was 18 centuries) encompassed in significant military actions. It may be a series of wars, you only see the significant combats and moves.

For modern times, think of the war as lasting either a number of months (as per how many game turns) or two week periods. This would actually be pretty historically acurate to what the combat units and ships could accomplish (at least as far as a game of Civ is ever likely to go) with the other years being those of peace or truce.

Thus, if you are at war for, say, 24 turns then it was likely two years (or maybe one year if you think there was no lag time for the combats). The other 46 years were periods of peace of those nations either leading up to the war or after the war.

 

[sealman]

Civ is a game, not a historical simulation. Sure we all want it to be bound by the limits of history but enhanced game play should win out over some historical facts.

What fun would it be to play if the eras changed at a set date every time? What fun would it be to play if only the Egyptians could build the pyramids?? I know these are not the points that homeyg brought up in his post,

As far as I am concerned, the only movement issues I have are in regards to naval ships.

 

[judgement]

Originally posted by homeyg
...or they should make the turns a smaller 'real time' period. Regarding turns, the time:turn ratio is way too broad...
...Lessen the amount of turns the game lasts at higher difficulties...

Don't you see that these two things contradict each other? In order for the game to span all of history, from 3000BC to the present, in a reasonable number of turns, each turn must be a pretty big chunk of time. If you make each turn a smaller time period, you'd have to increase the number of turns the game lasts. And that would of course make the game take longer to play, as well.

Its just a game, full of abstractions, the movement of units is one of the more obvious abstractions. Oda Nobunaga and rcoutme have each presented their own ways of thinking about this abstraction... you yourself can choose to think about it however you wish, but my point is, its a necessary abstraction in order for the game to be playable. As Dida points out, if you made it less abstract, the game would have so many turns that we'd all still be halfway through our very first game.

 

[Pirate]

Years are red herrings. It's all turns. Once people forget that the trouble begins. Years just give an arbitrary perspective for gaguing your technological progress, etc... In fact, nothing in the game is to scale, but everything works just fine when you realize you are playing with turns and tiles.

And realistic in terms of events = bad. It makes things predictable and eliminates imagination. I LIKE when Ghandi nukes someone and the Ancient Sumerians build the Sistine Chapel.

 

[Ballazic]

Homeyg i understand your consern but i know these ideas will really kill the game.

 

[homeyg]

Okay, okay, I'm convinced. Maybe they weren't such good ideas on my part after all.