Rationalizing Scale

[Tholish]

A standard civ map is 100 by 100 squares, representing a big chunk of the world say 10000 miles on a side. Each square is thus 100 miles on a standard map.

In ancient times, it takes a Settler 50 years to move that 100 miles. Even in modern times, it takes an infantryman 1 year.

Thus this game is not realistic and I will not play it any more...no, wait.
I can rationalize this.

Civ 3 uses the same map screen for the tactical and the strategic.
A war between two countries will involve a dozen or so moves and countermoves in the game, when on the ground it would have involved hundreds or thousands of marches and countermarches. The war that is played out on the game represents a sampling of how the war went tactically and is reflected strategically, if that makes sense. For a settlement to be established 300 miles away really takes 150 years in the bronze age. For an infantry division to advance 100 miles into enemy territory really will take a year in the industrial era.

By similar reasoning, we all know very few artillery pieces, much less catapults, can shoot 100 miles. But the game on the board merely represents the tactical with distorted scale. The battle takes place at the edge of the square, and the artillery can shoot into the enemy units in the next square.

This is just an extension of the scale distortion we have already accepted--the size of the soldiers doesn't match the cities which doesn't match the terrain and etc...these things are no more than stylized representative symbols.

Similarly, buildings don't really represent single buildings, except in the sense that buildings are constructed to symbolize institutions. The temple doesn't represent just a building, but a priesthood, and a bunch of religious education of the populace and all kinds of practices and beliefs taking root. Then maybe they built a temple to commemorate the cultural change they had effected. The Market doesn't just represent a Market square but a set of established businesses and business relationships and weights and measures and coinage and commercial law. It represents an institution, and the architectural place is incidental. A mine doesn't necessarily represent a mine, but just means the area is developed more for production of durable goods than for production of subsistence.

And, of course, a city doesn't represent a city, but an entire province. Each citizen represents a populated 10000 square mile area. That citizen on that developed square might include a market town and dozens of villages.

 

[Rammstein]

I agree and all, but is there a point to this?

Seriously, I have never really thought hard on this - sure, moving one tile takes 50 years but RR takes you there in nothing flat and so on... but I'm not really disturbed by this.

 

[derekroth]

The only thing that I don't like about scale is the fact that naval units operate under the same principal from the begining of the game to the end. I think that by the industiral age, there should be some new ability to allow for strategic movement of naval units.

 

[warpstorm]

Why bother rationalizing it? It's a game. A tile is a tile - no more, no less. A turn is a turn - no more, no less. Nobody working on it had a goal of trying to make a realistic simulation.

 

[homeyg]

I brought up an argument awhile ago in the CivIV forum, and I was put down.

 

[Tholish]

It just helps me enjoy it more. If its just an abstract game why bother with animations and not just use gamepiece shapes. The feeling that it is authentically representative of something helps. Why put the year down in the corner if its not supposed to mean anything? Why bother to carefully calibrate units relative strengths and worry about what resources were really available when and how economies really work and all if it takes a year for Modern Armor to move 400 miles unless you can somehow rationalize it. OK, that represents the campaign game overlayed on the same map as the grand strategic long tern development game.

Its like, say, that war between Rome and Carthage that lasted for so long. There were long periods of peace, during which all this strategic action, building of resources and so on, is realistically scaled. An expedition is put together over a period of 10 turns, and Hannibal marches over the mountains to Rome, taking 10 or more turns, then theres a war that takes another 10. During which 20 turns all this other stuff happens strategically. The 300 years or whatever of the war is actually the 300 years the war took, but the tactical movement is displayed as a magnifying glass type overlay, using the map for those 30 turns (during which it wasn't doing anything else anyway) to show a campaign that really lasted a year or so.

The same applies to the hundred years war, or thirty years war. World war 2 obviously lasted longer than 6 turns, though, and its harder to rationalize. The civil war in 4 turns is also hard to see.

Judging by movement, campaign turns represent about two weeks (the time to walk 100 miles on rough terrain or 300 miles on a nice road. So the ACW should last 100 turns. But really, there is a second layer of distortion. The ACW had a major battle every few months, so each turn represents say 3 months, or about 1/10 of the strategic scale, not difficult magnification.. It would last 16 turns to fight the war, about right. But movement rates are 1/6 what they should be. The relative rates are right, showing that cavalry can raid the shenandoah valley faster than infantry could, but in the game theres only one raid which represents several. Now it works. The telescoping and the magnifying together make it all fit. Who really wants a 60000 turn scenario? That wouldn't be playable.

 

[Yaype]

If Civ was made to scale, it would take a ridiculous amount of time and effort to do anything in the game. There is no way you would be able to go from 4000 BC to 2050 AD in any reasonable amount of time. So, for the sake of gameplay (Civ3 is a game, BTW ), let us all accept the scale as is and keep on playing through the night.

EDIT: 300 posts! I am a lightweight, I know.

 

[mac224]

The earth is 24,000 miles in circumference, 12,000 from north to south (but maybe 10,000 usable space for civ purposes (in a temperate world like ours). So a world civ map should be 2.5 times as wide as it is tall.

While there is no way to exactly match up Civ Time, Civ Space, Civ Movement, and Civ Combat. I think the best match occurs with the small maps, where a "city" is really an entire state several hundred miles wide. I'm not sure how the calculations work out between the orthogonal grid and the real earth dimensions. However I'm making a WAG that a map of 75x30 would be about right (assuming a mercator projection CIV map). That gives about 300-400 miles per tile.

This isn't perfect by any means, but I think it's most realistic (within what is possible in CIV

mac

If Civ was made to scale, it would take a ridiculous amount of time and effort to do anything in the game. There is no way you would be able to go from 4000 BC to 2050 AD in any reasonable amount of time. So, for the sake of gameplay (Civ3 is a game, BTW ), let us all accept the scale as is and keep on playing through the night.

EDIT: 300 posts! I am a lightweight, I know.

 

[MikeH]

Trying to rationalise Civ's scale is like trying to visualise 4 dimensional objects, you go mad if you spend too much time on it .