The dichotomy of guns or butter is false.

[Dearmad]

Worse than that it's outdated 1980's type thinking toward this game design. Seriously, I think it was a Chris Crawford game that ensconced this sort of thinking into Sid's take on a core value to his own game design for Civ.

In the game this translates into slowing your domestic economy and research (via derailing your builds of civic developments and wonders, etc.) in favor of building military units or visa versa. Basically when you go to war you start to lag behind the "game" of teching and keeping up with population (research, etc.).

This has been a core idea to ALL of the civ games since #1. I think it has truly hampered it's basic game design.

I wonder if Civ VI will finally advance past this idea and trust there are other game systems one can design to balance the idea of constant warfare versus domestic development. One that comes to mind is separating the building of military units from the building of domestic things such as a "theatre" or a "library."(Which things are really merely ideas that change multipliers to resource additions to your economy...)

These economic drains (military??) or additions (buildings?) don't come from a common industrial/gear/cog resource. And aren't simply net +/- modifiers. Depending on the age and technologies involved the mustering of an army and the weaponry required for that army and the social systems required to support that army (roads, the proper militaristic attitude of sacrifice, nationalism, patriotism, grit?, whatever drives a terrorist or rebel, food and its distribution etc., political/real knowledge of one's enemy and how to defeat them versus how to defeat a different enemy) are NOT always used to develop armies to the detriment of the civic and social and economical development of a civilization.

A lot also depends on the geopolitical circumstances, and the technology involved, and the types of resources involved, and how common/uncommon those resources are. Resources being people, technological knowledge, engineering know-how, raw materials, infrastructure to produce/process etc., knowledge (intelligence?).

I dunno, I've always sort of disliked how warfare always slows you down on the other side of the development (tech, pop., etc.) unless you go whole hog and buy into it and then you go world conquest. Which is the most ultimately unrealistic outcome (and unfun outcome for me) of this game. Map painting is boring to me. It is sooooooo easy and simple minded; repetitive.

I think the designers are addressing this in part by the multiple ways of victory. But I think they've got the Tiger by the tail and don't realize the meat of the issue is this continued artificial division of guns versus butter that they could change in favor of some other artifice.

The people who wield the guns need to eat butter on their toast, and some societies develop new ways of supplying MORE of it during warfare. Europe outstripped the rest of world in nearly every measurable capacity during times when it was in near constant warfare. The society of the Huns and early Muslims was based on warfare and allowed for their civilizations to grow magnificently fast, and this included religious and cultural developments that put their enemies to shame! And in many cases it wasn't due to them wiping out their enemies, but incorporating them into their new amalgamated cultures.

And Greece first blossomed for real when they changed the nature of warfare from scary threats where a relative few died no matter how many met, to the idea of killing nearly every enemy soldier you encountered on the field in an organized and horrifically efficient manner.

And later in history: Spain and Portugal largely untouched by war in the 40's (Well, spain rebuilding from it's civil war), Switzerland completely untouched. Germany devastated. Russia devastated. Now? Germany is power-housing Europe. Russia is... well in its own odd way a very serious world player. Spain? Portugal? Switzerland? Yeah whatever... Swiss interesting due to economy, but still only a country without any real world shaping potential.

Anyway. I think separating military units from the resource channel used to grow your civ would lead to some interesting playtests of the core systems for Civ. Supporting the units should obviously cost something, but building them maybe should be a natural outcome of having the systems in place (politically, industrially, tech, social attitudes), so you sometimes find yourself with a large military you didn't exactly order up but was an outgrowth of how you shaped your civ. SO what you gonna do now? Disband them and flood the domestic economic sector with idle dudes? Start a serious supply side economic experiment? Or... send them to a foreign war to begin your Imperial bent?

Just some thoughts.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

It's been stated that it's an interesting choice (one of the key things to lure people into Civilization) to choose whether to build a unit or a building. If you could do both at once, it would become a no-brainer: always build both at once (if you can afford it financially). It is like this in the Total War games, where you can build both at once. You could replace the fundamental choice of guns vs butter with something else, as you say, but what could it possibly be that would be as crucial (and therefore interesting)?

 

[Dearmad]

It's been stated that it's an interesting choice (one of the key things to lure people into Civilization) to choose whether to build a unit or a building. If you could do both at once, it would become a no-brainer: always build both at once (if you can afford it financially). It is like this in the Total War games, where you can build both at once. You could replace the fundamental choice of guns vs butter with something else, as you say, but what could it possibly be that would be as crucial (and therefore interesting)?

I don't think the designers of Civ have ever adequately tested their game's basic systems and this "interesting choice" with possibilities that could lead to even MORE interesting choices than this basic dichotomy. It is such a core choice to the game that it begs to be questioned and challenged in serious game testing and design.

One that comes to mind is through certain political choices discovering you have created a vast military class that needs to... do something or go away somehow before threatening the underpinning of your civ (resource drains, etc.) The Mamelukes come to mind, the Nazis come to mind, the Shogun and Samurai class comes to mind, Knights come to mind, the USA's "professional" army of today and Industrial complex comes to mind. None of these vast warrior caste systems came about due to draining away the society's wealth. In fact quite the opposite.

Seems like an interesting game choice can be built into a system that tries to abstract that instead of the one that has already been explored to death: guns or butter.

I think they are already TRYING to explore this with the multiple paths to victory but are blinded by the one huge underpinning obstacle they have in their way- this unit or "building" building mechanic that is trying to portray this basic abstraction.

 

[Sherlock]

'PC games are all about choices'.


- Bill Stealey, Co-founder of Microprose.


Not much of a choice if you can have everything.

 

[isau]

I don't think your suggestion works for this game. The point of the mil/building divide is setting up a risk situation for science and culture play for people who don't want to work with a lot of Units. To win those victories, you toe the line on Unit production. Any Units you build beyond what is needed to protect yourself are technically wasted production. So you're always gambling.

How would a Culture game work if they had to build Units alongside Buildings? If the Culture player is forced to build units, there's nothing separating that type of play from military play. On the other hand, if you said they could sacrifice Unit production for more Buildings, again back where you started.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

2 men work in a field making butter.

War breaks out, their landlord calls them up to militia.

No-one works the fields for 2 years.

1 man comes back to work the fields making butter.

15 years later, this man is too old to work the fields and retires, but his 2 sons pick up where he left off.

Guns v Butter may be overly simplistic, but it is still a thing at various stages in history

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions

 

[Kid R]

With correct play the most efficiently set-up empire should win all wars anyway so you could just say scrap the military side and concentrate on butter. But people do like the fighting too. 4X games like Civ are always kind of awkward hybrids of empire management with light wargames bolted on top. The guns or butter design is IMO just the way to make the hybrid work when really in terms of gameplay the first 3 Xs and the 4th X are two completely different games.

 

[Magil]

With correct play the most efficiently set-up empire should win all wars anyway so you could just say scrap the military side and concentrate on butter. But people do like the fighting too. 4X games like Civ are always kind of awkward hybrids of empire management with light wargames bolted on top. The guns or butter design is IMO just the way to make the hybrid work when really in terms of gameplay the first 3 Xs and the 4th X are two completely different games.

Now see, I remember a time, before V came out, when conquering for territory actually gained you something. You would declare war and capture territory in order to advance your economic position, not merely to hurt the enemy.

In other words, I dispute your claim, good sir. True, in Civilization V it was generally true that the war side of things was marginalized in terms of actually building up your civilization, but that's because there were simply too many penalties for warmongering and, in Brave New World, too many penalties for expansion.

The point that the one who does well in the economic game also does well in the war game is well-taken, but I think you took that point in the wrong direction. That hardly means the military side of things is an afterthought. Prior to V, if you engaged in quick, decisive wars that gained you territory, you could develop the conquered cities into cities that were just as productive as your homeland (and it wasn't totally impossible to do this in V, just unduly hard).

So, the military side of Civ can be vital for your economic development. If it's done right, that is.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Choices are what is important. Before civilization V it made little sense to build anything but military because military conquest was by far the best way to develop your economy.

 

[Kid R]

So, the military side of Civ can be vital for your economic development. If it's done right, that is.

Agree totally. I don't think I made a good point before! I was mainly thinking about the OP who seemed to be suggesting making it so there'd be no clear distinction between wartime builds and peacetime builds. In which case I say the game'd be even more dominated by the first 3 Xs, i.e. the empire management ("spreadsheet") parts, with the 4th X, the military operations ("tactical boardgame") part even more irrelevant because dictated by sheer economic output power and weight of troop numbers/quality.

If the 2 parts of the game are to both be present they both should be important, and it should be an interesting choice about which way to go at any given moment. Being good at one part shouldn't make the other part irrelevant. Maybe it's a tricky balance for the devs though as they must know the fanbase ranges on a spectrum from [love peace + hate war], through [love both peace and war], to [hate peace + love war], and they have to try and please everyone!

 

[Magil]

Choices are what is important. Before civilization V it made little sense to build anything but military because military conquest was by far the best way to develop your economy.

Now that's taking things way too far in the opposite direction and is just foolish to say. I'm not even sure where to begin correcting you. I mean, there's a reason why in IV, Worker first was generally considered the most optimal build (given a typical starting location).

You build up a strong economy, then you go to war to expand it.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Yes in the early game but by mid game the best economical investment was to build a military to conquer cities.

Civilization IV was more or less completely based on build orders, even technologies had little choices if you played with tech trading on.

 

[Magil]

Yes in the early game but by mid game the best economical investment was to build a military to conquer cities.

Not really the case. It was a wise investment to build both. And it was hardly necessary to continuously conquer and expand, that's a personal choice. You could certainly win the game with a medium-sized empire at most levels of play.

Civilization IV was more or less completely based on build orders, even technologies had little choices if you played with tech trading on.

Not really true either. I personally rarely played with tech trading because I like to build up my empire myself rather than manipulate the AI into giving me the techs I need, but with tech trading, there was an important element of strategy in picking techs that nobody had researched yet so you could trade the techs to multiple parties to get more overall techs out of it. Which encouraged gathering intelligence and knowing which techs the AI had not yet discovered (or at least using espionage to discover it).

As for build orders, sure, but that's hardly something unique to IV. What was important was how build orders changed based on your civics, the terrain, worker labor available, and the diplomatic situation. Ideally, there should be some strategic depth to your choices of build in any Civ, and I think all Civ games have accomplished this to varying degrees. Civ VI certainly shows promise, a lot more than V did.

 

[Metecury]

Nothing a mod can't solve. Units already spawn on encampments, let's make it so that you can queue up a bulging and a unit a the same time having the encampment using the same production bring used by the city to build the unit.

 

[Kid R]

That is actually a neat idea if I understand what you mean. Effectively production would not actually go directly into any particular build but be saved up, and you would only have to commit to a choice at the point where you could afford the entire hammer cost of a particular thing right at that moment? No more half-built things sitting in queues for ages. No more wonder fails! Debatable realism I guess...

 

[Dearmad]

Nothing a mod can't solve. Units already spawn on encampments, let's make it so that you can queue up a bulging and a unit a the same time having the encampment using the same production bring used by the city to build the unit.

Wait. So our military encampments will spawn units over time? Or they can be made to? THAT would be very interesting for me to play around with in a mod... could practically separate the military build up from the domestic other stuff exactly as I'd like to try out.

Or did you mean barbarian camps?

 

[Magil]

Wait. So our military encampments will spawn units over time? Or they can be made to? THAT would be very interesting for me to play around with in a mod... could practically separate the military build up from the domestic other stuff exactly as I'd like to try out.

Or did you mean barbarian camps?

By default, once you have the military encampment district built in your city, units that the city produces appear in the encampment tile rather than the city center tile.

 

[Ciarson]

it would be quite a challenge if you had to allocate citizen from your empire into an "army support" special citizen.

in ancient time, up to medieval age, there was the Warrior/noble Caste. (who had privileges to make their "job" at defending their country easier)

why not having to chose between allocating citizen to that "caste" or having them work the field or run a job in a building.

one of the main issue a player would have is that giving privilege is easy, taking them back isnt, so citizen who are allocated to this kind of caste could not be reallocated elsewhere without trouble.

the more citizen you have that are turned toward military training, the more unit your empire could support without having to pay extra gold. (could be changed later in game with something like conscription where all other citizen would count toward unit support but on a smaller level making nation with few "military support" citizen making a comeback in the mid/late game)

a player that focus on war would have a good bunch of their citizen that would turn toward military training and few citizen turning toward science, production and agriculture

a player that focus on science who would have a smaller amount of citizen turning toward the army and more citizen turning toward production, science and agriculture.


just an idea, it might need to be improved for balancing and certainly would need to be tested. but first i am just proposing it to see if it's of all the other players liking.

 

[historix69]

I only read the 1st post and skipped the rest.

You can easily implement "guns and butter" in a Civ5 mod and try it out, e.g.
- by individually adjusting the costs of things or
- better by adjusting the Gamespeed-Parameters, e.g. use Marathon Gamespeed and set GrowthPercent,TrainPercent, ConstructPercent from 300% to 100% ... units and buildings will be cheap as in a normal game while you have roughly marathon research times. Play wide on a huge map and go commerce. Once you have Big Ben and the 25%-commerce-bonus you can purchase all normal units/buildings by gold on a regularly base.
- by adjusting the conversion rate from production to gold (PROCESS_WEALTH) and rushbuy things instead of building them.

When reducing the construction cost or rushbuying things, the gameplay is speed up (since you have all the advantages of buildings earlier) and the research costs (ResearchPercent) should be adjusted, otherwise you will rush through the game like playing on quick speed.