Realism

I love Civ, always did. And as a student of History, the game keeps on appealing to me. But there are a few things in Civ5 that genuinely bother me; I keep on being turned off by a certain lack of realism, specifically as it pertains to the notion of “time”, but also with regards to many other elements of the game.

I would like to see each “turn” reflect a realistic passage of time, and each “achievement” or “action” be bound to that same realism. But before we can talk about the notion of “time”, we need to talk of the details of a given population, and the management of resources. Here’s a few examples of what I’m talking about.

- I would like to see the real amount of citizens living in each city, not just some “arbitrary” number like 4 or 5, which doesn’t mean anything to me. If a city has 300 inhabitants, then it should say “300”.

- I would like to know what those 300 people are assigned to doing – children, men, women, those fit to work or fight, those too old to work, number of deaths and birth each turn, how many in a couple/married, single, etc…

- The place of women and men in the workforce, each gender being limited to specific tasks at different point during History, and such possible assignment changing according to scientific discoveries or policies, etc.

- Among “those fit to work”, I would like to see who is assigned to doing what – those to cultivate food, these to building a particular building, those to extract resources from the ground, or take care of the animals around the city, those to researching new technologies, being artists, etc.

- The number of people not busy, or depending upon the rest of the population to live (children, elders, etc.) and how much resources must be dedicated to that segment of the population.

- Policies regarding said population, and how that affects said population (could we, like China in real life for example, limit the number of babies per family, etc…)

- I would like to see the medical situation of my population – How much food and water each person is receiving on average each turn and the impact on the health of the population, how an epidemic might be affecting the population, etc.

- A “defense indicator” for a given city, showing how vulnerable said city is to external attacks.

- Etc…

Now, once this framework would be in place, notions of realism could be expended to other areas, starting with the above-mentioned “time” concept. Examples:

- If a percentage x of the population is assigned to building improvements, then said improvements will be built slower or faster. I would like to be able to see that if I assign 1,000 individuals in a given city the task of building a barrack, it will not arbitrarily take 20 tours to build it, but rather require the accurate amount of time needed to build such building, if x people are assigned to doing it!

With this basic concept in place, each “turn” could be specified – I would personally like to be able to select that each “regular” turn be 1 year. But with exceptions – see further.

When a scout is exploring the map, limiting the amount of space that can be explored per turn should be in line with the amount of time for each turn. And while, as an example, it makes sense for a scout to be able to explore 1 hex per turn (per year) during antiquity, the same exploration would be much quicker as technology advances. How?

- Scouts (and armed units for that matter) need to eat, and sleep. It is absolutely not normal for a scout to be able to explore 2/3 hexes in a desertic or polar regions without carrying sufficient water and food! And therefore, scout’s exploration should be limited in this matter.

- Therefore, early in the game, such exploration should be very slow, and speed up with time.

- Perhaps scouts should “refill” water and food by visiting hexes that have appropriate resources before being able to carry on their exploration.

Now when it comes to fighting battles, the “normal” turn time of 1 year would stop, and be replaced by a realistic timeframe as well:

- It is absolutely not normal for each “battle” to take more than a few days / weeks / months in between each assault!

- During medieval time for example, an army could “siege” a city for several weeks, ONLY if they had appropriate food and water (again) to stay there for such time.

- Otherwise, army units would need to refill food and water appropriately, or else face the prospect of having to leave and return later, or else die.

- When an army unit sieges a city, a certain amount of food accumulated inside the walls of said city (thanks to a granary) would ensure the population could survive well while being under siege, while the enemy would be at risk of having to leave for lack of food.

- Etc…


Other non-realistic pet peeves:

- Once a barrack is constructed, what would prevent an army in real life from training each year/turn to gain further XP? That doesn’t make any sense to have the building but being unable to use it!

- All units should be able to move realistically, in accordance to their real capacity, and to the reality of the terrain! In modern time, crossing the Atlantic requires only a few days for a modern boat. During the renaissance? 3 months. That’s what I’m talking about. And so, if each turn is 1 year, then it takes 1/3 of a turn for a boat to cross the entire Atlantic during the renaissance – not an arbitrarily number of hex per turn! Therefore, a unit’s Movement Points should change over time, thanks to appropriate technology and/or epoch.

Other misc. pet peeves:

- When upgrading a “RANGED” military unit garrisoned within a city (such as crossbowmen) with better technology, the upgraded unit is no longer a ranged unit!!! (such as musketmen) --- NOT good… A ranged unit should always be upgraded with a better ranged unit, a melee unit as a better melee unit, and a mounted unit as a better mounted unit.

- Why limiting the amount of units that can be garrisoned into a city to only 1???

I have a feeling none of this can me “moded”, right? It would require a fundamental change in the underlying game code?

Thanks for your feedbacks.

 

Because the number 4 is much easier to see on a tv when playing on your 360/PS3, than the number 400.
Trust me, the day will come. Why do you think the interface is so huge and blocky, especially the diplomacy overview which shows basically NO information and yet manages to take up a HUGE amount of screen-space. Not to mention the lower left "orb art". Or the way the tech tree and auto-suggest building / research popups are just begging for a controller to caress their buttons.

I'm not even joking or trying to be sarcastic, thats the sad thing.
I'm convinced it will be ported to the consoles, if it was made 100% with the PC in mind they would not have cut out so many research topics (thats hard to fit on a tv screen, see other rts games on consoles), they would not have made the interface so huge, nor would they have cut out the finer details of the overview and interface displays.
And if the game timescale was longer, and more actions were required per "time", people would be more inclined to shut off their consoles than to sit in their couch for another 30min to finish off another "quick civ session".

Civ Revolutions was the sign of all of this. The civ franchize stopped being for pc's and stopped being grand strategy from that day forward.
Overall i agree with everything you said. I apologize for my doomsday theories.

 

Well, i hate to burst your bubble, but if they decided to make those changes, i would stop playing really fast. (probably even more of the community would too, IMO)

I don't have a problem if you modded that into the game, but man this game would get so tedious with those changes.

 

gameplay > realism

 

That is sad, but not for the reasons you think.

 

You want Sim City or The Sims

 

realism != fun, engaging gameplay. If it did, the Americans would have to wage a long, bloody war starting in the industrial era for their independance and have to pull of a victory with something like 1/4 the turns everyone else has...

 

I would like a Whopper without sauce, but can you believe at Burger King's they sometimes refuse that??

 

Guys, I believe this is one of those "Joke" threads like the Tic Tac Toe or CiVI discussions.

 

Could be. Looks like they want Sims Medieval to come out sooner rather than later.

 

Which is becoming increasingly annoying.

 

I'm not hoping for the game to be like that as "default" or for everyone - I would just hope for one of those "time" options to make the game that way. For me it wouldn't be tedious at all, to the contrary, it would be more engaging, with games that I could carry on for days / weeks. I guess it's a matter of personal preference.

In your opinion, could that really be modded?

No, it's not a "joke" thread - I really meant everything I wrote, as my personal preference. Other games like Sim do not include all that great civilization/conquest elements which makes this game so great. I would just hope it was more realistic, that's all -

PCs now come with really big monitors, you know ;-)

 

As you saw, you've already been laughed at for your suggestions. As I have been for mine elsewhere. The game is first and foremost a product to be sold - hence they've designed it with their target demographics in mind: one whose attention span is short...

I agree with most of what you said but it's not gonna happen. What you and I and others are looking for is an historical simulator - sort of like SimEarth but with social changes rather than geological/genetic ones. It's too niche to sell.

The goal of the franchise is to pump out 50$ from as many people as possible - not to be historically accurate.




G.

 

What decisions would you make on that data? Not many probably. CIV games are designed to let you to dictate the actions of your people rather than observe them. The demographics screen shows you as much data as you need to make decisions. Many of the other details you'd like are shown in the game somewhere but in a much more abstract form.

 

I always assume that 4 meant 4,000 or 40,000 or 400,000. But your right it means nothing, like it not a game changer....

 

You know, I really wouldn't need to be able to control each individual in each city to be satisfied... But at least having some "baseline"

- 52% women
- 48% men
- 775 population
- 15% children (cannot work)
- 5% elderly (cannot work)
- That leaves 298 men that can work the "men" jobs and 322 women to do "women" jobs
- Off those 298 men, use xyz% to build buildings, abc% to extract mining, etc...

That would be PLENTY sufficient.

When the game starts we have the choice of the "speed" of the game - I guess I would like a "new speed" setting called "realism", in which a worker doesn't arbitrarily use 3 turns to build a road, no matter which epoch we happen to be in at the time, but rather a real amount of time, based on reality.

 

I have to tell you, as it is, it's already quite compelling. My point is that an extra "Time option" called "realism" with all interactions and movements "fitting" at least some of that concept would be a welcome addition.

 

While some of your ideas are ok you don't seem to like the idea of abstraction. For me, it's ok that population in a city is abstracted to a small value, rather than seeing the whole number (in civ4 I believe you could've seen it in some chart panel...I think).

Anyway I too sometimes disagree with how things are abstracted: for example, what the hell is production !? I can understand food and gold, but production ... ?

 

The "Lords of the Realm" game had those exact concepts in, and yet it worked on an old 486... How difficult can it be to implement?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_the_Realm_II

Each "turn" represented one "season" (4 per year). And I believe that game was quite popular, right? Rather than "tedious"?

 

Civilization is a fundamentally unrealistic game, and making it realistic would be a huge endeavor, totally change it, and possibly make it impossible to play it in practice.

There are some games that attempt to be more realistic (e.g. Victoria 2), but they generally don't span all human history, are still far from being realistic, and might be less enjoyable to play (this is subjective, obviously).