Realistic Starting Nations

[Paul Saunders]

I've been thinking about this topic for some time, so I'd like to share my thoughts on this issue. First I'd like to point out two key considerations;

1. Many players want to play on a realistic world map. This indicates that many players would like to experience a reasonably realistic simulation of world history.

2. Civ3 is not a realistic simulation of world history. The scale of the game is wrong and virtually everything in the game is represented in an abstracted way. This is necessary for playability, but it does make a realistic historical experience pretty much impossible.

In spite of this obvious conflict, many players still want to experience at least some semblance of realism, and one thing that many consider to be important is realistic starting positions.

To take some obvious examples, most players believe that the English should start in England and the Americans in America. However, you don't have to think about real world history for very long to realise that the English and the Americans didn't actually start in those locations. Not only that, but the English and Americans didn't even exist at that time.

Marla Singer's world map uses what many consider to be "realistic" starting positions. One stated consequence of this is that Europe begins hotly contested, with many nations starting in close proximity to one another. It is stated that the Romans are in a bad position because they're hemmed in by the French, Germans and Greeks. Also, the English and Japanese are at a disadvantage because they are on islands and can't get off until they develop ships.

But hang on a moment, the Romans never had a problem with the French in real life, because the French didn't actually exist at that time. As for the English, they didn't start in England, they (the Angles and the Saxons as they were then) were Germanic tribes who invaded England after the Romans left. England (or more correctly, Britain) was originally occupied by the Celts, who started in Europe.

Likewise, the Americans didn't start in America, they evolved as a nation from the various European colonies that settled there.

The fact is that many of the nations represented in Civ3 did not exist at the beginning of the game, so their inclusion is unrealistic. In reality, most modern nations evolved from older nations, but this "evolution of nations" is not represented in the game. It would probably be very difficult to incorporate such a concept yet still produce a playable game.

THE EVOLUTION OF NATIONS

So how did nations evolve? Well I'm no expert on this, but considering the simplicity and abstraction of the game, I don't think it's necessary to go into it in too much detail. So here are some general observations.

EUROPE

Most European languages today fall into one of three types, Celtic, Romance, and Germanic. Welsh, Scottish and Irish are Celtic languages. French, Spanish and Italian are Romance languages. German, English, Norwegian and Swedish are Germanic languages. These languages are indicative of how the various European nations evolved.

Much of Europe was originally occupied by the Celts, who originated in south-west Germany, these were pushed north by the Romans and west by various barbarian tribes, so that the main vestiges of the Celtic empire now exist only in the north and west of Britain, and Brittany in France. Note that the name Britain comes from the Ancient Britons, who were Celts.

Then consider the Romans. French, Spanish and Italian are all Romance languages. Although the Romans spoke Latin, I don't think the similarity between the words Romance and Romans is a coincidence, since the Romans occupied those countries for a very long time. In game terms therefore, I think it's realistic to suggest that the Romans "evolved" into the French, the Spanish and the Italians.

Then there were the barbarians in the north-east, the Germanic tribes, who pushed the Celts westwards. Some of these tribes (the Angles and the Saxons) invaded Britain, and later evolved into the English (Angles = English). In the north they became the Vikings and later the Norwegians and the Swedes. Some of the Vikings headed east and eventually became the Russians. The rest became Germans, and many European countries today speak various German dialects.

The English in Britain gradually assimilated Wales, Scotland and part of Ireland to became the British, which is what Americans usually mean when they use the term "English". They should have been called "British" in the game (in fact England is labelled Britain in the Civ3 manual but they evidently decided to change it for some inexplicable reason). Haven't the Americans ever heard of the British Empire? The English never had an empire.

As for the Greeks, Alexander's empire extended to the east, and so didn't affect most of Europe.

In game terms therefore, I believe the most realistic way to begin the game would be with four nations in Europe; the Celts, the Romans, the Germans and the Greeks. Unfortunately there are no Celts in the game, but since these were mostly assimilated anyway, they may as well be represented as mere barbarians. At least that would give the remaining three nations more room to expand.

The Romans would start in Italy and move west, to effectively become the French, Spanish and Italians (although still called Romans in the game), and south to North Africa. The Germans would start in northern Germany and would spread north, west and east to control all of northern Europe, Britain and Russia. The Greeks would start in Greece and should probably head east to Turkey and beyond.

As far as terrain is concerned, most Civ map-makers provide plenty of grassland in Europe, whereas in reality, most of it was originally covered by forest. Starting an empire in a forested area isn't easy, but it wasn't in real life either. Northern Europe was not a desirable place to colonise initially, but it gradually became more important as the forests were cleared.

The Germans should not get off to a very quick start therefore, they should have the problem of chopping down all those forests, but they'd have plenty of room to expand into and it would pay off later once most of the grassland was uncovered.

MIDDLE EAST & ASIA

The most ancient civilisations began in Egypt, Babylon, Persia, India and China.

Egypt is still there, although it's shrunk somewhat. In game terms the whole of the North African coast (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya) could be considered to have evolved from the Egyptians.

Babylon eventually became modern day Iraq, and Persia became modern day Iran. In game terms all of the Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Arabia, Afghanistan etc.) could be considered to be descendants of the Babylonians and Persians. (I'm sure some might disagree, but let's not get into any deep arguments about this, it's just a game, remember?)

As for India, It didn't start out as such, but various early civilisations in the Indus Valley eventually evolved into the Indians (and also Pakistan and Bangladesh in game terms).

China probably best represents the "East-Asians" as a whole, so the Mongols, the Siberians, the Koreans, the Japanese, the Vietnamese etc. are probably best thought of as Chinese in game terms. I don't know much about the Far East, but I don't think it would be appropriate to include the Japanese, for the same reason that I don't think it's appropriate to include the English. Japan probably originated from China just as the English originated from Germany.

AMERICA

All of the existing countries in America (north and south) originally evolved from European colonies, primarily British (Germans/Celts), French, Spanish and Portuguese (Romans). Although not colonising America directly, a great many Irish (Celts) and Germans emigrated to America. So most of the people we now think of as Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians and so on, are actually Celts, Romans and Germans.

So what about true American empires? Well the North American Indians were just scattered tribes, they never really developed an empire as such, so it's unrealistic to include them in the game. But of course, there were the Aztec, Inca and Mayan empires. However, these started very late in the game (the Aztecs didn't turn up until the 12th century), were very small in world terms, and were quickly squashed by the invading Europeans.

In Civ3, the Aztecs would have an unfair advantage starting in America due to having no other competition there, due to it being a very rich region, and due to starting much earlier in history than they really did. By the time the Europeans turned up, an Aztec civ would probably have covered the continent with roads and be churning out cavalry, musketeers and cannons. America would not be the walkover it was in real life.

Even if they did have competition in the form of the Iroquois, it's just not realistic for America to become "civilised" so early in the game, not if a reasonably realistic historical development of the planet is desired, which is of course what I'm writing about.

For this reason I think it's best to fill America with barbarian tribes instead. This would make America a prime area for colonisation later in the game, with the barbarians providing token resistance.

A FEW NOTES ABOUT SEAS AND OCEANS

In order to make the colonisation of America a feature of the later game, it's probably necessary to design the ocean/sea areas in such a way as to prevent the Europeans from reaching America too early in the game.

Although the Vikings are known to have reached America quite early on in history, they didn't settle there so it probably wasn't practical to do so given the technology of the time. In Civ3 it is, so I think this should be prevented with ocean tiles. It was probably a very risky journey anyway, with very cold and stormy weather that far north, even if the water is technically quite shallow.

(By the same token, ocean tiles could be used to prevent players from easily rounding the notoriously treacherous Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America.)

Civ3 map designers seem to be developing the tendency of representing the shallower parts of the world's oceans as seas. I must admit that the idea of representing the Mid-Atlantic ridge with sea tiles is very appealing, but unfortunately it's not very realistic, for two reasons;

1. The shallower parts of the oceans as represented in Atlas maps, are not really very shallow at all. On the map I'm looking at, the contour line that shows the Mid-Atlantic ridge is 4000m deep! It may not be as deep as the rest of the ocean, but it's more than deep enough to qualify as an ocean in game terms. There are a few genuinely shallow bits, such as at the Azores and other islands, but most of it is deep enough to qualify as ocean, not sea.

2. The distinction between seas and oceans isn't really based on the depth of the water, it's based on how enclosed the water is, which affects how difficult it is to cross. Take a look at where real seas are marked on the map - the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the North Sea, the Bering Sea, the China Seas, the Coral Sea, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Caribbean Sea. These are all enclosed areas.

On the open ocean the currents run deep and unrestricted over huge distances, which can result in gigantic waves, with no shelter from the wind. Seas, on the other hand, are protected from such currents by nearby land and islands. Even if parts of the North Atlantic seem shallow enough to qualify as sea, they have no protection from these large waves and currents.

So even if these supposedly shallow patches of sea in the middle of the world's oceans seem like a good idea, I don't believe they are at all realistic. Seas and oceans should be defined according to how difficult they are to cross, not on how shallow the water is (that's only important very close to land). Sea areas shouldn't allow Europeans to travel to and colonise the Americas too early in the game, in my opinion. This is crucial to a realistic historical development.

AFRICA

This is a problem in the game. I think Africa has much in common with America, in that it should be filled with barbarian tribes rather than major nations. However, Africa is easily accessible and could be quickly colonised by the Egyptians and possibly the Romans.

I think one of the problems in Civ3 is that Africa is too desirable an area in game terms. In real life it's very hot, much of the terrain is desert or jungle, it's full of wild animals, is rife with diseases, and is not generally a very good area for growing crops. In short, it's not an ideal place to develop a great empire. With Civ3 terrain though, it's much too hospitable.

I think one solution might be to make the terrain of Africa more undesirable. So for example, there should be very little grassland. There's a big difference between grassland that receives a lot of rain (as in Europe) and hot, dry grassland. Better to use plains I think. Likewise, a lot of the semi-arid plains might be better represented as desert. Throw in plenty of jungle and hills and you have an area that produces very little food. I think that lack of food is a very important consideration in order to make Africa unsuitable for great empire building.

For the same reason there should be lots of tundra underneath the vast forests of Siberia and northern Canada, those are very inhospitable places too. Believe it or not, the coldest part of Siberia is in the forests south of the tundra, further inland from the sea. The problem is that Civ3 only represents terrain, not climatic conditions, which are a big factor in real life.

AUSTRALIA

Similar to America, this should be populated by barbarian tribes only, and should be difficult to get to until later in the game. Although the connecting seas may be quite shallow, historically Australia wasn't colonised until much later, during the great age of colonisation. It shouldn't be very desirable in terms of terrain, it's more important for it's resources, but early empires shouldn't be aware of that.

Due to the abstractions of the Civ3 game design, connecting Australia with sea would most likely mean that it would quickly become part of the Indian or Chinese empires. I'm not sure how this could be prevented without inserting an unrealistically large area of ocean.

(continues...)

Paul

 

[Paul Saunders]

(...continued)

FINALLY

To sum up, I think a realistic historical game of Civ should begin with just eight nations - the Romans, Germans, Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Indians and Chinese. These would gradually develop into the great nations that we know today, although their names, and hence their origins, would remain the same.

The culture feature would help these new nations to evolve, in much the same way as the Spanish (Romans) in the western US were absorbed into the US (German) culture and the Siberians (Chinese) into the Russian (German) culture. (I know it didn't happen exactly like that, but that would be Civ3's way of representing it.)

In the modern world (in game terms), the Celts still control Ireland, but have otherwise disappeared through cultural absorption. The Germans control Britain, north and east Europe, Russia, western Canada, the United States and Australia, while the Romans control south-west Europe, eastern Canada, Central and South America.

The Chinese and Indians both have decent sized, well-established empires, but have not sought world conquest, the Babylonians and Persians are not doing terribly well, and the Greeks and Egyptians have shrunk to tiny proportions.

The "winners" are probably Germany, having the most power and resources, while the Romans come in a close second, controlling a greater land area, but not so many resources. All the nations are pretty much at peace these days, except for the warlike Babylonians and Persians, who still can't seem to curb their bloodlust.

There are also many warlike tribes still active in Africa, which has never been fully conquered by the "civilised" nations, who still only have scattered colonies there.

I'd rate the current rankings as follows;

1. Germans
2. Romans
3. Chinese
4. Indians
5. Babylonians
6. Persians
7. Egyptians
8. Greeks

My suggestion about using only eight nations conveniently corresponds to the ideal number that the game was designed for. Although sixteen nations is possible (which many people like) it slows down the game significantly (which most people don't like). Given the way that real nations and empires have evolved over the millennia, I think these eight nations are the most realistic to start with for the most historically accurate game.

Comments and alternative ideas are welcome.

Paul

 

[Ralph_Jones]

You cant make it realistic, bc you cant have some civs to start in some time.

 

[dannyevilcat]

Well, realism be damned-- when the 20th century rolls along, I like to have those nations who have survived that long in the proper spots.

 

[Kublai-Khan]

Russia is not ethnically german,
they are slavs
very different people.
If you are going to establish germans as a civilization ,
the slavs should be there too.

And the american civilizations should be there in the game,
but with lots of barbarians surrounding them ,
so that they cant establish contact between each other.
Peru has a 3.000 years history, Mexico even a larger history.
Many people believe that agriculture was invented just two times
in history
once in the middle east, and once in america.

And the incas or mayans for example get qualified as civilizations,
Mayans even discovered writing,
they deserve to be more in the game than those early german barbarians


i like the idea.

 

[SpaceWeasel]

I really agree with what you're trying to say, however, you are suffering from a bit of Eurocentrism =). Of course, nobody knows every aspect of history so I think if everyone contributes what they know this threat could actually produce some very useful thoughts, perhaps useful enough to base a mod or scenario around.

The first and most obvious problem I notice is that you have the Persians and Babylonians independent - these were actually the SAME people at different times in history! I think it would fit very well into what you're trying to accomplish to combine the two.

Second, the Chinese and Japanese are quite distinct from each other. Although much of Japanese culture is based on Chinese, it developed over thousands of years into something somewhat unique. Based on your analysis of languages for Europe, Japanese is actually quite different from Chinese (aside from the alphabet, which is borrowed) and the Japanese are somewhat of an enigma to historians, combining aspects of many different cultures from various areas. Many suspect Japanese is somehow related to the Polynesians.

This is another major flaw of your analysis: the Polynesians were a very powerful force in early, early history, an colonized all those little islands in the pacific with simple rafts (including Australia). They were quickly outpaced by the rest of the world, however, due to their lack of resources, so including them only as barbarians is appropriate. However, the South Pacific is not difficult at all to colonize and can be (relatively) easily traversed even today with simple rafts. The way China and India colonize the South Pacific on Satya's world map (which I use) is rather realistic, and they almost never reach Australia very early.

As far as Africa is concerned, it IS actually a very resource-rich area, with vast deposits of mineral wealth and oil, excellent places to grow certain fruits and coffee, and so forth. I would agree with making the continent a bit more inhospitable, however. Also, many of the resource the continent contains did not become valuable until modern times, such as uranium (Niger bases almost its entire economy on the stuff). However, the Zulus seem to get very powerful in many games I play (in my Civ2 world map games, the Zulus were usually the most unstoppable force on the planet!). While Africa did have many great civilizations during the ancient era, I would say that it more than any continent should, in gameplay terms, be simply packed with barbarians.

As far as North America goes, I would disagree that the Native Americans were not a signficiant force. I think a great idea would be to start them just across the Bering Stait (although Native Americans had diffused to most of North America by 4000 BC, according to the general historical consesus). Unfortunately, the AI isn't smart enough to migrate south to better climes, and would probably end up setting up a bunch of cities in Canada.

Europe being your most thought-out continent, I mostly agree, however I would probably have the Celts as a civilization (to later become the English). Also, the "French" in the form of Gaul, the collection of barbarian tribes, was a big impediment to Rome's european expansion, and kept them stuck in the mediterranean until around 40 BC when Caesar's legions rolled all over them. This fits pretty well within the context of the game. However, by your standards Gaul would be classified as "Germanic" so I guess it makes sense not to include the French, if only to reduce competition for Europe.

One big problem I have noted as far as historical accuracy is the way Siberia always develops in my games. Europe usually turns out somewhat realistic, as does Africa and the Middle East. Even America comes out realistically, assuming the Aztecs are filling in for the Spanish and they are starting a few thousand years early. However, Siberia invariably becomes a patchwork of different nations that makes no sense within the game (I think the AI can sense where resources might be in the future, or at least what terrains they are on, so everyone tries to secure a source of oil). I would definately include the Slavs as a civilization to represent the ethnicities of eastern Europe/Russia.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. I hope more people post their ideas to this thread - I like to hear others' thoughts on exactly how Civ3 abstracts the processes of civlization, inlcuding nation-building.

 

[Hadrian]

Originally posted by Kublai-Khan
Russia is not ethnically german,
they are slavs
very different people.

Not at all. Swedish vikings, the so called Varangians, were called to bring order to what we know today as Russia. They came, brought order, colonized, ruled, and eventually formed (together with Slavs) the Russians. Varangians descendants ruled the country for nearly 700 years. The one you (probably) know as Ivan IV Grozny (the Terrible) was in fact of Swedish (i.e. Germanic) origin.

Cf. http://viking.no/e/russia/

However, saying Germanic and Slavs tribes are different is not the whole truth. They are, today. But they have more in common than they're different. Both originated from the Indo-Germanic tribe, the people who settled all of Europe - except Hungarians, Fins, Estonians, and Basques. These four are NOT Indo-Germanic. The first three are Ural-Altai people and no one really knows where the Basques came from...

 

[Paul Saunders]

Kublai-Khan wrote;

"Russia is not ethnically german,
they are slavs, very different people."

Yes, this has been pointed out elsewhere. Most Russians are Slavs, but the original western (white) Russians did evolve from the Vikings.

"If you are going to establish germans as a civilization ,
the slavs should be there too. "

I agree, the Russians are in. (As someone else pointed out, they'd represent the Mongols too, many Russians are of Mongol descent, and something needs to fill that large gap in northern Asia.)

"And the american civilizations should be there in the game,
but with lots of barbarians surrounding them ,
so that they cant establish contact between each other. "

It may be just me, but I don't have any problem bumping off barbarians, they just give me a bit of combat practice to bump my units up to elite. I don't consider them to be a major problem.

"Peru has a 3.000 years history, Mexico even a larger history."

Maybe, but they never developed civilisations to rival Europe and Asia.

"And the incas or mayans for example get qualified as civilizations,
Mayans even discovered writing,"

True, but they never developed their civilisations to the extent that civs do in the game.

"they deserve to be more in the game than those early german barbarians"

But the Germans developed into powerful empire building nations, the Mayans didn't. I'm not saying that the early American civs aren't valid civs, but the way the game works makes them develop unrealistically. If you include the Aztecs in the game, by the time the Europeans reach America it'd be covered with cities, roads, mines, irrigation etc. and huge armies of musketmen, cavalry and cannons would kick the crap out them the moment they landed on the beaches.

It ain't realistic, I'm just trying to think of a way of having a game of Civ that develops in a similar way to history.

If you're particularly keen on the American civs, perhaps it would be better to design a game/scenario concentrating exclusively on the Americas?

Paul

 

[Paul Saunders]

Space Weasel wrote;

"I really agree with what you're trying to say, however, you are suffering from a bit of Eurocentrism =)."

I know, I know...

That's partially due to being a European myself so I naturally know more about my own part of the world, and partly due to the designers of the game. It's not my fault they chose to emphasis the European tribes!

I'm pretty sure that if Civ was designed in China you'd probably have different tribes for different Chinese dynasties, the Mongols, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Indonesians etc. (and probably many more I've never even heard of) Over in the west we'd probably have to make do with "the Europeans".

The fact is that world history is extremely complex and this is a very simple game, so there are many unavoidable abstractions.

"Of course, nobody knows every aspect of history so I think if everyone
contributes what they know this threat could actually produce some very useful thoughts, perhaps useful enough to base a mod or scenario around."

Well that's the idea. I have posted this in CivFanatics too, and also the comp.ibm.pc.games.strategic and alt.games.civ2 newsgroups, and I've received the most responces from the newsgroups so far.

"The first and most obvious problem I notice is that you have the Persians and Babylonians independent - these were actually the SAME people at different times in history! I think it would fit very well into what you're trying to accomplish to combine the two."

I was thinking a similar thing myself actually, and discussing it with a friend last night. I started playing a game on Marla's map yesterday and although the Persians got off to a good start, the Babylonians were hemmed in by the Greeks (also doing badly) and the Egyptians (me) and had to make do with Arabia, a big lump of sand! Naturally they weren't happy.

So what do you reckon? Include the Persians and leave out the Babs?

Also I think it might be best to ditch the Greeks. I know they were important historically but as you say, I've been a bit Eurocentric and there just isn't enough room to go around in Europe. The Romans colonised the whole Meditteranean area so maybe it would be better to just assume that the Romans symbolically represent the Greeks too? After all, the Romans did adopt the Greek gods and much of their culture.

"Second, the Chinese and Japanese are quite distinct from each other."

This is interesting. I had thought of Japan as being a somewhat modern nation (like the English) but the Civilopedia states that they were there in 250BC. Not that early but still, they would give some necessary competition to the Chinese, who've got things way too easy over there on their own.

It certainly would be better for gameplay to spread out the starting nations more. Less in the west, more in the east. So where should the Japanese actually start? Somewhere on the Asian coast, close to Japan? I'm not happy about civs starting on islands because they have to develop map-making to get off, which is silly, because they must have know how to make boats in order to colonise the island in the first place! Is it possible to put them on Japan and give them mapmaking as a starting tech?

"This is another major flaw of your analysis: the Polynesians were..."

I didn't really think they were significant enough to include.

"The way China and India colonize the South Pacific on Satya's world map (which I use) is rather realistic, and they almost never reach Australia very early."

That sounds good. I haven't tried Satya's map yet.

By the way, how many different world maps are currently available? And which are best? I haven't really looked into this yet. I'd prefer to use eight civs on a reasonbly-sized but not gigantic map.

"As far as Africa is concerned, it IS actually a very resource-rich area,"

Yes, very desirable.

"However, the Zulus seem to get very powerful in many games I play (in my Civ2 world map games, the Zulus were usually the most unstoppable force on the planet!)."

Yes, a big problem this, what were they thinking when they included them? Gameplay obviously, not realism.

"While Africa did have many great civilizations during the ancient era, I would say that it more than any continent should, in gameplay terms, be simply packed with barbarians."

Well there's plenty of barbs in the game I started yesterday on Marla's map and I've kicked the crap out of loads of them and haven't lost a single warrior yet (most of whom are now elite). Is there some way of making the barbarians tougher?

If not, I'm tempted to think that including the Zulus may be the best way to make Africa a bad place to colonise. But the terrain needs to be suffiently lacking in food to prevent the Zulus from growing to problematic proportions. This means - little or no grassland in Africa, plenty of jungle, desert and hills, and very few rivers to prevent irrigation.

"As far as North America goes, I would disagree that the Native Americans were not a signficiant force."

Well they were indeed significant in history, but because of the way the game works they simply become too powerful by the time the Europeans arrive. I don't think they should qualify as civs in the Civ3 sense of "a nation of prolific city-builders and explorers who build roads, mines and irrigation across the entire continent".

"Europe being your most thought-out continent, I mostly agree, however I would probably have the Celts as a civilization (to later become the English)."

Well I have no problem with that personally (being of Celtic descent myself) but there is the problem of having too many civs in the small area that is Europe. Since the Celts were mostly absorbed by the Romans and Germanic tribes I think it's simpler to leave them out of it. For a realistic representation of Europe I think it would be better to do a Europe-specific scenario with a large European map.

"Also, the "French" in the form of Gaul...
...However, by your standards Gaul would be classified as "Germanic" so I guess it makes sense not to include the French, if only to reduce competition for Europe."

For much the same reason I'd prefer to leave out the Celts.

"One big problem I have noted as far as historical accuracy is the way Siberia always develops in my games...
...I would definately include the Slavs as a civilization to represent the ethnicities of eastern Europe/Russia."

Yes, good arguments were given on the newsgroups for including the Russians, so I've decided to go along with that. Another problem in Russia is that in game maps it's always shown too large due to the projections used.

I'm not saying that Russia isn't large, but with the stretching that takes place near the poles it's made even bigger than it really is, and this just exasperates the problem of having so much colonisable space there. it also tends to be far too hospitable, whereas much of it is harsh tundra, freezing forests, deserts and mountains. Many game maps show much of Russia as lush grassland, especially when you chop the forests down. If this is the case, then why isn't most of the world's wheat produced in Siberia?

I have some new ideas about using a different map projection, an interrupted Molliweide, which produces more realistic land areas and shapes and expands the north and south gaps in the oceans forcing a big separation of the Americas from Asia and Europe. Not strictly realistic but it could work very well in keeping the Americas pristine for later colonisation. I'm seriously thinking about designing such a map for just this purpose.

"Anyway, just a few thoughts. I hope more people post their ideas to this thread - I like to hear others' thoughts on exactly how Civ3 abstracts the processes of civlization, inlcuding nation-building."

Yes, this could be very interesting, I've already had my mind changed about a number of things. Check out the newsgroups I mentioned if you want to read what others have said about this.

My current thinking for starting civs is this;

Europe - Romans, Germans
Africa - Egyptians, Zulus
Asia - Russians, Persians, Indians, Chinese

Seems more balanced, don't you think?

Also possibly the Japanese, but I'd like to restrict it to just eight nations, so maybe dump the Zulus instead?

Paul

 

[SpaceWeasel]

After reading your reply and thinking about this, I thought of two simple changes that would make the game more realistic from the outset, and which are quite easy to accomplish in the edtior.

#1 A "raft" or "canoe" sea unit that can ONLY ever travel on coats, that is available from the beginning. Maybe have it only buildable by certain races (like the Japanese). In reality Japan was mostly confined to their islands until, well, the 1930s (they were extremely xenophobic). Unfortunately, it is much harder for a civ with fewer cities to keep up in Civ3 than it was in Civ2, so a "realistic" development of Japan is impossible. There may be some way to correc this, perhaps by providing special resources to the Japanese and reconfiguring the AI to be extremely timid about exploration and colonization. The biggest problem would be allowing them to keep up in science.

#2 Stronger barbarians! I totally agree, at all difficulty levels I can walk right over the barbarians and they aren't even really a problem by the ADs. I was thinking about reconfiguring them to start with a powerful horse unit (like, oh, say the Horseman) and then as their "advanced" unit have an even more powerful horse unit - probably a special unit with about the stats of a knight. Alternatively, give them a really powerful ground unit and a powerful horse unit. Barbarians should stay a problem well into the mid-ADs, IMHO, and it's important to have tough barbarians if we want to make regions realistically hard to colonize.

Oh, when I was talking about the Polynesians I didn't really mean to include them as a civ, but it's important to show how easy that area is to colonize (since they did it with stone age rafts). The indiginous culture of the "spice islands" area was mostly a mixture of Chinese and Indian influences, so having these two powers colonize here makes sense. Also, as far as Africa, I would make certain portions (like the Mediterranean coast and the Horn) fairly hospitable to encourage realistic colonization. Eastern Africa had a heavy cultural influence from India and China until about the 1500s when internal politics basically eliminated China's powerful, far-reaching navy (not sure of the exact date or century for this =). It would make sense to have Indian or even Chinese colonies here. Also it should be noted that Ehtiopia is the only country in Africa that was never fully colonized by Europeans (though the Italian took over Eritrea before WWII, for some reason). Chines or Indian cities would be a good representation of the "civlization" of this area and the cultural influences that would have probably been much stronger if not for certain freak events of history.

As far as the Aztecs and other American civs, I have mentioned in other posts that they present a unique opportunity to show how history would have developed without certain abnormalities that changed history. Sure, the Aztec areas weren't full of cannons and cavalry, but they DID have extensive roads and irrigation systems to rival those of Europe (they didn't have quite as many "roads" per se due to mountainous terrain, but they had very effective trade and communications links throughout their empire). They also had around maybe 150,000-200,000 warriors total, a pretty huge sum by European standards, that could have EASILY slaughtered the Spanish if they had attacked at the right moment. As it happened, they basically let them do whatever they wanted until it was way too late, and they sat of a hill outside the capital and shelled it to pieces with a few cannons, while everyone died of smallpox. What if smallpox HADN'T been a factor and the powerful Aztecs HADN'T been so trusting? An interesting possibility.

One author I've read makes a compelling argument that North American civilization was severely hampered by a lack of certain crops, animals, and resources. If an American civ was included, I definately wouldn't put any horses on the map, but even then I don't think the game can adequately simulate the civilizational (is that word?) consequences of not having farm animals and certain strains of food crops. Let alone simulating the devestating effects of smallpox, which may have killed up to 90% of the indiginous population (MUCH worse than the black plague to be sure). So for this reason we may be forced to leave them out and just represent them as "barbarians." Then again, powerful barbarian horsemen would certainly not be realistic for a horse-less continent... BTW I'd definately suggest reading the book Guns, Germs, and Steel for some interesting perspectives on the development of world civlizations.

Oh, and you really should try Satya's map. It is not quite as geographically accurate, but he made certain "important" areas a little bigger (especially Europe) and positioned resources to make colonization more important. For example, most of the spices in the Far East are located in the Indonesian islands, and the vast majority of the oil is in the Mideast. While this isn't entirely realistic, it is all designed to make game history flow realistically. He also puts loads of barbarians in areas where they were really a problem, like Central Asia. With powered-up barbarians this might actually create the kind of sweeping waves of invasion that we saw in real life, something that I feel is important to have simulated. One final thing, I most definately agree about Russia being mostly grasslands. WTH? Even the Soviets had to really entice people to even get them to move there. The Russian Far East and Siberia should be resource-rich, but highly inhospitable.

Incidentally, I think the way the game simulates forests is somewhat unrealistic. Personally I think the forests should give lots of shields (like, 3) but gradually run out after a few dozen turns. This means that frontier cities in forested areas will produce lots, but as the population increases they will suffer deforestation. This will give them more land to irrigate and grow the population further, but you would have to make up for lost production with factories, mines, and such. Unfortunately, there is really no way to do this in the game currently, but if Firaxis is reading...

OK, enough random thoughts. I'm interested to hear what people think about these ideas.

 

[Masterman]

I find these ideas very interresting, Paul Sanders. I believe that your analysis makes sense for more realistic and appealing civilization games. I will attempt to create a game from your ideas, although I will not re-edit the maps in the initial state, but simply include the desired civilizations in the correct positions. I am going to use Barbsatyas map as a base. I almost fully agree with your analysis, but will include more than 8 civs in the world for more diversity. I will include:

Europe: Germans, Romans, Greek and Celts (I will use the English since the Celts are not readily available).
Asia: Russians (aka the slavs etc.), Indians, Chinese and Japanese.
Middle East: Egyptians, Babylonians (aka Arabs) and Persians.
North and South America: none
Australia and Africa: none

If anyone is interrested in the results, I will post the saved game here

 

[Kublai-Khan]

I think that the nobility of russia were descendent of vikings, but not the common people.
The persians are indo-european and the babylonians semitic,
that is why they shouldn´t be the same people.
The babylonians should represent the semitic people of the middle east like the jews and the persians the aryans.
Iran-land of the aryans-
I think that we should have american civilizations in the game,
if we can make barbarians stronger, and we can slow down the tech-tree of the american civilizations until the arrive of the europeans we could make a very realistic game.
That is what i was trying to say.

They should definitely be in the game,
they didn´t achieve the power of the europeans countries becouse of a lack of resources and comunications .
For them they were the only civilizations in the world.
And they had to discover all the big advances by themselves,
agriculture, writing , engineering etc.
The europeans grabbed all the basic technologies from other people.

The Inca empire- i know that it sounds stupid-
was an empire,
not a confederation of warring tribes,
it was an empire and it controlled millions of people with different customs and languages.
I would really like to know if someone can make an estimation of the limit of land that you could control without horses in those times.Specially in a 3.000 meters mountain range.

I think that the lack of resources should strongly represented,
and if we can make the barbarians stronger an the tech-tree slower
or even different
that would make the game more realistic.

 

[Masterman]

I have set up a game with the aforementioned civilizations. There is just something I would like to do before testing how the game plays out: change the name of the cities for each empire (in particular, use major arabic cities for the arabs, and change the english names into celtic ones; additionally, since the germans represent the germans, french, english etc. they should have names for cities from all of those folks; this also goes for the romans and greeks) and change the civilization name for two of the tribes (english into celts and babylonians into arabs). Is there, without spending much time reading manuals, any easy way to do this?

 

[Marzipan]

Wow, fascinating thread! Makes me glad I picked up Civ III last weekend, even though I am now suffering from sleep deprivation . . .


Anyway, Paul's original comments spurred me to think that way the civilization -> nation -> government model is currently setup would need to be changed to have the game play be more like reality. A civilization can be only one nation and can have only one form of government in the game, but in reality, while a civilization begins that way, it evolves into multiple nations with potentially different types of governments. It would be nice if we could have for a model:

civilization
|-> nation -> government
|-> nation -> government
|-> nation -> governemnt
|-> etc.

As players, we would control all nations within our civilization. My limited understanding of the game so far leads me to think this is not something that can be made possible by a mod or patch.

What would determine when a civilization splits into two nations? One possibility would be to say that the farther a city is from the capital and the less contact there is with the civ, the more likely it is to split off and form another nation with its own capital, but still belonging to the same player (civilization). If multiple types of governments are "available" it may or may not choose the same type as it originally had. It might make things a bit more interesting and realistic if the player had the option of taking a few cities from the civilization, and splitting them into a different nation with a different form of government and capital that could act independently from the other nation in the civ, but still with both under the players control. Maybe this could be another one of the possibilities if you have a great leader "start a new nation" without it causing any civil unrest.

As far as how the game is now, here are some thoughts regarding "realistic play."

It might be interesting and fun to have a map with a North American indian civilization that is more mobile than a typical civ, but can only develop to the level the indians did, controlled by the player, and one or more European civs controlled by the AI). The objective would be to not get completely wiped out by the end of the game! If you want to compare yourself with another player, you could use the year you survive up to as the score. A player who can survive as indians until 1940 AD has done better than one who is killed off in the 1800's.

 

[Hadrian]

Originally posted by Kublai-Khan
I think that the nobility of russia were descendent of vikings, but not the common people.

Well, the Varagians did not came on one day, it was a long process over nearly 300 years and there were hundreds of thousands of settlers, merchants, mercenaries, and warlords. And obviously not all of them made up the nobility. So wether you accept it or not, it's a fact.
Ok, the whole thing is more complex than illustrated here. A lot of tribes left their traces in today's Russians, a result of their position at the edge of Europe and their far-sprawling empire. So you're right if you meant the Germanic traces are not relevant enough to qualify Russians as a Germanic tribe. Ack!

The persians are indo-european and the babylonians semitic,
that is why they shouldn´t be the same people.

Perfectly right. But this leaves open who should be put to northern Africa? Who settled there? I'd say Semitic people. The ancient Hyksos or the today's Arabs are both Semitic tribes. The Berbers are Caucasoid. While ancient Egyptians were neither Semitic nor Indo-Germanic. Actually I've no idea what they were but they did not expand into northern Africa, just civilized the Nile delta.

They (american civilizations) should definitely be in the game,
they didn´t achieve the power of the europeans countries becouse of a lack of resources and comunications .

Hmm, I would say it was all a matter of time. Correct me when I'm wrong, the first native Americans came during the last two ice ages (36000-32000 and 28000-13000 years ago) over the Bering street. According to accepted theory. Some say Polynesians arrived on another way. Some also date artefacts much sooner. And as mysterious as the Ainu in Japan are some excavations in Nevada: a man with Ainu and/or European characteristic features. Btw, I'm sure Egyptians were there too. At least it was possible according to the voyages of the great Thor Heyerdahl. However, the middle east people were cultivating wheat while the former Asian tribes still went southwards - they were nomads. One should have given them more time - that'll be an interesting experiment - from a divine perpective...

The Inca empire- i know that it sounds stupid-
was an empire, not a confederation of warring tribes,
it was an empire and it controlled millions of people with different customs and languages.

It was definitely an empire. Unfortunately for them one in its early stages. They had not invented gunpowder. And they had no horses as you mentioned. These disadvantages and their highly centralized political structure played in Pizarro's hands. He just executed Atahualpa and this was it. No one else could hold the empire together. The subjugated tribes cheered, the ordinary peasants didn't care at all, the remains of the Inca nobility fought heroically but their fate was sealed.
So IMHO the Inca empire was too unstable to qualify as a true civilization. So was the Aztec empire.
One could have killed the Spanish monarch - with no effect on the conquest of the Americas. But by killing the chiefs of the Aztecs/Incas their whole system collapsed.

I would really like to know if someone can make an estimation of the limit of land that you could control without horses in those times.Specially in a 3.000 meters mountain range.

Yes, and their empire was huge! But I think they overextended their reach, as I tried to explain above. They didn't really control their lands, at least not to the extent the European princes did.


ttfn

 

[SpaceWeasel]

Adding new city names is easy easy easy. Just open up the editor - you can probably safely edit Civ3Mod.bic for this - and then go to "Tools:Use Default Rules" which will turn off default rules. Then go to "Rules:Edit Rules." This is the "meat" of the editor. Bring up the Cvilizations tab and select the desired civ, you will see a list of all theri cities which you can change and add to to your heart's desire.

 

[Paul Saunders]

Originally posted by SpaceWeasel
#1 A "raft" or "canoe" sea unit that can ONLY ever travel on coats, that is available from the beginning. Maybe have it only buildable by certain races (like the Japanese). In reality Japan was mostly confined to their islands until, well, the 1930s (they were extremely xenophobic). Unfortunately, it is much harder for a civ with fewer cities to keep up in Civ3 than it was in Civ2, so a "realistic" development of Japan is impossible. There may be some way to correc this, perhaps by providing special resources to the Japanese and reconfiguring the AI to be extremely timid about exploration and colonization. The biggest problem would be allowing them to keep up in science.

How can a raft be made to *only* travel on coasts? In the game, galleys aren't prevented from travelling on sea or ocean tiles, they just have a good chance of sinking if they do.

I've been playing some test games and the Japanese do tend to stay on their islands longer than they need to. Even after developing boats they seem to prefer colonising nearby tundra islands rather than heading for the much richer terrain on the mainland. Go figure!

#2 Stronger barbarians! I totally agree, at all difficulty levels I can walk right over the barbarians and they aren't even really a problem by the ADs. I was thinking about reconfiguring them to start with a powerful horse unit (like, oh, say the Horseman) and then as their "advanced" unit have an even more powerful horse unit - probably a special unit with about the stats of a knight. Alternatively, give them a really powerful ground unit and a powerful horse unit. Barbarians should stay a problem well into the mid-ADs, IMHO, and it's important to have tough barbarians if we want to make regions realistically hard to colonize.

Well I've discovered in the editor that the player gets huge bonuses against barbarians. We've been told that Regent level is the one at which neither the player or the AI gets any advantages, but this is not the case with barbs!

At Regent, the player gets a 200% bonus against barbs and a ridiculous 800% at Cheiftan! Only at Deity is there no bonus. There's even a 50% bonus at Emperor. For my "scenario" I've edited these so that there's no bonus from Regent upwards, and much smaller bonuses below that. Hopefully this means that special units shouldn't be necessary.

Oh, when I was talking about the Polynesians I didn't really mean to include them as a civ, but it's important to show how easy that area is to colonize (since they did it with stone age rafts).

Well just because they did it doesn't necessarily mean it was easy. We don't know the circumstances involved. They may have done it out of desperation due to starvation, or "criminals" may have been forced to leave the islands. For each raft that reached another island, how many rafts sank without trace? We shall never know these things.

The indiginous culture of the "spice islands" area was mostly a mixture of Chinese and Indian influences, so having these two powers colonize here makes sense.

Yeah.

Also, as far as Africa, I would make certain portions (like the Mediterranean coast and the Horn) fairly hospitable to encourage realistic colonization. Eastern Africa had a heavy cultural influence from India and China until about the 1500s when internal politics basically eliminated China's powerful, far-reaching navy (not sure of the exact date or century for this =). It would make sense to have Indian or even Chinese colonies here.

Also true.

As far as the Aztecs and other American civs, I have mentioned in other posts that they present a unique opportunity to show how history would have developed without certain abnormalities that changed history. Sure, the Aztec areas weren't full of cannons and cavalry, but they DID have extensive roads and irrigation systems to rival those of Europe

Perhaps, I'm sure that this is something people are never going to agree on. I think the Americas should be left empty, others insist there should be someone there. I've got a partial solution to this, see later post.

One author I've read makes a compelling argument that North American civilization was severely hampered by a lack of certain crops, animals, and resources. If an American civ was included, I definately wouldn't put any horses on the map, but even then I don't think the game can adequately simulate the civilizational (is that word?) consequences of not having farm animals and certain strains of food crops. Let alone simulating the devestating effects of smallpox, which may have killed up to 90% of the indiginous population (MUCH worse than the black plague to be sure). So for this reason we may be forced to leave them out and just represent them as "barbarians."

As you say, the game just doesn't represent these things in sufficient detail or realism to make this possible. I think barbs are the best option myself.

Oh, and you really should try Satya's map. It is not quite as geographically accurate, but he made certain "important" areas a little bigger (especially Europe) and positioned resources to make colonization more important.

I'll have a closer look another time, but for now I'm using Marla's map, with a number of modifications that I've made.

One final thing, I most definately agree about Russia being mostly grasslands. WTH? Even the Soviets had to really entice people to even get them to move there. The Russian Far East and Siberia should be resource-rich, but highly inhospitable.

Yeah, it's pretty inhostpitable in Marla's map, or at least Scipio's modification of it, which is what I've modified.

Incidentally, I think the way the game simulates forests is somewhat unrealistic. Personally I think the forests should give lots of shields (like, 3) but gradually run out after a few dozen turns. This means that frontier cities in forested areas will produce lots, but as the population increases they will suffer deforestation.

Absolutely! But I guess the Civ forests represent a "sustainable" resource, not cutting too much wood so the forest continues to regrow. Only when you physically chop the whole lot down do you get the big shield bonus, but no more forest!

Paul

 

[Paul Saunders]

After a couple of days of editing and testing, I've now put together a scenario based on these ideas, using a modified version of Marla's map.

If anyone wants to check it out it's in the User-created maps section, here's the link to the thread;

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12300

Full details on everything I've done are there.

I'd appreciate any comments.

 

[Qelebex]

Great thread... I'll try to work something out on a standard size map

 

[SpaceWeasel]

I got this idea from other threads about resources, but perhaps there should be a (very common) "timber" resource that only appears in forest squares. In the threads I read this represented the special type of wood that was good for buildilng naval units. Perhaps if we broadened the definition of timber to refer to all types of really usable wood, and had it give a big shields bonus but run out fairly often (and reappear rarely) this could sort of simulate the phenomenon.

I'll be looking to try out your mod once I get enough free time to start a new game =).