Number Crunchers vs. Role Players

[dexters]

I put myself down as role-player/immersion player, but I'm more of an immersion player than a role-player. So technically there could be a 3rd option, but I'm not sure how many people are like me.

I don't play roles. Actually after picking a Civ, a city is just a city to me. Be it Thebes or Rome, a capital is a capital. I'm interested in how the game systems come together to produce a particular diplomatic climate/situation and to get there and explore those situations, I have to learn to play it competently, so the usual micromanaging tricks and city specialization are learned, but not so much enjoyable.

 

[CraigMak]

Definitely a strategist. I play primarily multiplayer vs humans. I see the game as a strategy/war game. Always looking to improve technique and find the best strategies. Basically, it's a more in depth, turn based version of Starcraft to me. Almost all the basic principles in that game apply in civ, just at a much slower pace.

Rush vs teching up or building up, Units vs Infrastructure, Balancing developing yourself with the need to have units and not be weak. What unit counters what.

In battle, avoiding choke points, creating a concave, hitting units with their counter units, pulling back injured units. All are the same in both games.

 

[beetle]

Which other features do you think, or potential features would, appeal to both camps?

I want my world to be a sphere, not a cylinder or torus.

 

[Tabarnak]

I put myself down as role-player/immersion player, but I'm more of an immersion player than a role-player. So technically there could be a 3rd option, but I'm not sure how many people are like me.

I don't play roles. Actually after picking a Civ, a city is just a city to me. Be it Thebes or Rome, a capital is a capital. I'm interested in how the game systems come together to produce a particular diplomatic climate/situation and to get there and explore those situations, I have to learn to play it competently, so the usual micromanaging tricks and city specialization are learned, but not so much enjoyable.

Definitely a strategist. I play primarily multiplayer vs humans. I see the game as a strategy/war game. Always looking to improve technique and find the best strategies. Basically, it's a more in depth, turn based version of Starcraft to me. Almost all the basic principles in that game apply in civ, just at a much slower pace.

Rush vs teching up or building up, Units vs Infrastructure, Balancing developing yourself with the need to have units and not be weak. What unit counters what.

In battle, avoiding choke points, creating a concave, hitting units with their counter units, pulling back injured units. All are the same in both games.

Maybe i'm both after all. Hard to define what ''immersion'' means.

Like someone mentionned, we can run tanks and send spaceships before 1700 AD if we really want. Does it mean that we aren't immersive? What about councidering, equal to others, that certain civs are just too hard to counquer or to bribe because they are actually what they were in the past?

Immersion for me is also the power to use all aspects from the game and not just concentrated on direct aspects like decisions that are only around X vs Z.

Sometimes, i will deliberately stay peaceful against a civ only because he's ''kind'' to me even if i can really whipe his ass. Maybe i'm just a puss after all

 

[dexters]

@Tabarnak, yeah, my immersion comes from the exercise of power and the interplay of my Civ's power vs. other Civs. It can include keeping a Civ alive because I felt like it, or liberating a Civ because I felt like it.

The city state system is a nice addition in Civ5 because it allows for a new way to exercise that power in the form of influence over a 3rd party. It's not a straight question of conquest.

 

[Zaimejs]

I like the explorist (man this won't let me make up words!) tag that someone used earlier. That's how I am.

I think that immersionist means that when you choose a tree and a faith and all of that, you pick what your civilization would pick rather than the best choice for the sake of winning the game. I don't know about all of that. I picked immersionist because I don't get into the micromanaging minutia, but I do play more to win than just to experience a civilization. I love exploiting my UUs and UBs and UIs and whatever else those mean.

I love exploring and finding the perfect city spot.

I do sometimes engage in rivalries with civilizations and enjoy the occasional synergy of destroying a Spanish Armada with my Man O' Wars.

 

[janboruta]

I'm a role player. The day when I started reading strategy guides and encountered mods that are all about balance (I'm looking at you, Communitas), I started feeling like I was playing a spreadsheet with better graphics. I lost interest in the game immediately.

But then I thought "why the heck do I care if I win or not", stopped worrying about production overflow or if my gpt is counted correctly and I sank into Civ 5 again.

 

[Gori the Grey]

As a lot of people have said, I'm a mix. I'm a strategist at heart, but one who really likes it that the circumstances in which I'm deploying my strategies involve a broad simulation of civilizational advance. All the while I'm playing, I'm thinking entirely in terms of maximizing my civ's odds of achieving one victory or another (so a 1500 Chinese Einstein is, to me, Plastics, and so Research Labs and so more bpt). But I really like it that playing this strategy game involves watching borders expand on a world map, managing historical military units, moving through eras that somewhat resemble the eras that this world really did move through, etc.

I sometimes sit back and just look at the beauty of the civ I've built so far, but then I'm soon making my next decision.

 

[Tabarnak]

I think that immersionist means that when you choose a tree and a faith and all of that, you pick what your civilization would pick rather than the best choice for the sake of winning the game.

Gotcha, it's probably the closest sentence of a true immersion. But there are certainly other aspects to counsider like civ personnalities. Are you going to play the big bully if you pick Attila?

 

[gps]

Not that I have any difficulty, but IMO some people get carried away with the simulation aspect. The leaders are just numbers, with tendencies based on a few factors - certainly not enough to be realistic.

Well, that's the whole point of all that virtual reality and simulation stuff - and video games in general: to take numbers and turn them into a living and breathing game environment. Is a shooter about shooting or about numbers? Is a racer about racing or about numbers? Is a platformer about jumping platforms or about numbers? Is a RGP about role playing or about numbers? If it's all just numbers, then why bother playing video games at all? A simple Sudoku will do as well...

 

[mrwho]

I don't really get what people mean when they say they're a role player/immersionalist. How does a typical game go for someone like that? What decisions would you make differently than a strategist?

 

[krc]

I don't really get what people mean when they say they're a role player/immersionalist. How does a typical game go for someone like that? What decisions would you make differently than a strategist?

Strategists start Tradition. Every game, every map, every civ. They want early philosophy for NC, then education. They ignore early wonders. They do this, at least in part, because the numbers say that tradition is the best starting policy tree, and science is king.

If you start honor or piety or liberty because you think it "makes more sense" for the particular civ you are playing, then you are a role player/immersionist. If you try for an early Stonehenge because you are playing the Celts, then you are a role player. If you beeline mathematics with Babylon just so you can build the Hanging Gardens, you are a role player.

 

[budweiser]

Strategists reroll the map then start Tradition. Every game, every map, every civ. They want early philosophy for NC, then education. They ignore early wonders. They do this, at least in part, because the numbers say that tradition is the best starting policy tree, and science is king.

If you start honor or piety or liberty because you think it "makes more sense" for the particular civ you are playing, then you are a role player/immersionist. If you try for an early Stonehenge because you are playing the Celts England, then you are a role player. If you beeline mathematics with Babylon just so you can build the Hanging Gardens, you are a role player.

Fixed it for ya.

I'm a role player at heart and I don't play France because its so hard to get Notre Dame, at least if you try for NC first. A role player puts the Chitzen Itza wonder in the city of Chitzen Itza. Which is pretty easy to do if you take a GE first or second, but a number cruncher would say take a Great Scientist first.

 

[cpm4001]

I'm a role-player/immersionist/explorist with some number-crunching thrown in for good measure . I like long games on big maps while still having some strategy thrown in to keep things interesting.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I want my world to be a sphere, not a cylinder or torus.

As do I, and for that we need triangles.

I am number crunchy, but not strictly optimal player. I feel no compulsion to role-play, I just like to sandbox and just build a nice empire of lots of cities. On immortal.

 

[docbud]

I voted as role playing, but to be honest--I mainly play just for fun.

While I do concentrate on things like getting the NC up asap and things like that, I pretty much just experiment and try to have a good time.

Of course, I do want to win.

 

[cpm4001]

As do I, and for that we need triangles.

I seem to remember hearing that someone had devised a way to use just hexagon tiles to make a spherical map. Cool if that found its way into Civ VI!

 

[Sonereal]

I seem to remember hearing that someone had devised a way to use just hexagon tiles to make a spherical map. Cool if that found its way into Civ VI!

Is there any point, mechanically, to a spherical map?

 

[MantaRevan]

My logic:
I play this game for the primary purpose of enjoying myself. -----> Going 100% number cruncher and finding "optimal strategy" makes the game more deterministic and less fun----->I'm going to enjoy myself more by virtue of immersion.

I don't think you can do all one or the other though. If I were truly role-playing to create an awesome civilization, I wouldn't be able to adopt policies in detestable trees like tradition or Autocracy, but sometimes for gameplay reasons that just isn't an option.

 

[krc]

I seem to remember hearing that someone had devised a way to use just hexagon tiles to make a spherical map. Cool if that found its way into Civ VI!

You need a mix of hexagons and pentagons. (Take a look at a soccer ball for a simple example.)

But I think I can safely predict that tiles that fit together to form a sphere are not likely to make it into any tile-based game that gets played on flat screens. There is a fundamental mathematical difficulty---the geometry of spheres (expressed in terms of curvature) is unavoidably different from the flat geometry of a plane surface. The sides of a cylinder are mathematically flat (as you can see by taking the paper label off a soup can). The surface of a torus (doughnut or bagel) is mathematically flat. But spheres are not flat.

That's why flat maps of the (spherical) earth either cut it apart into orange-peel like sections or else use projections that distort sizes and shapes. (For example, Greenland looks much larger on most flat maps than it does on a spherical globe.) If you tried flattening part of a sphere onto your monitor during a game of civilization, the tiles would all be different sizes. That's complicated computationally and graphically (since the textures have to be resized).

Then again, Google Earth manages to make this work for the real world with the ability to zoom in and at out to different resolutions. So it might be possible in a civ-like game if you give everything coordinates of latitude and longitude and get rid of tiles altogether.