The Unofficial "Bad Realism" Thread

[Idylwyld]

DH_Epic, your comment about giving players more choice vs more chance misses the mark. Playing RaR the number of choices is huge, but the players I've talked to still find what they consider the "best" way and play it into the ground. While I agree that this is not the most aesthetically pleasing way to play the game it shows that knocking players out of their comfort zone is a good thing once in a while. That said I wholly agree that the player should, if he chooses, be able to ameliorate the effects of any disasters. Making "Meteorology" a new tech that does nothing more than prevent or lessen the loss of pop from a notional "Hurricane" disaster forces the player to choose between researching the safety or going after the shiny new unit prereq adds to gameplay in my opinion.

 

[dh_epic]

Those are the kinds of choices I like, Idylwild. Will you build a weather station, or will you build up your army?

If you don't build a weather station, you might see this:

"Thousands of people were killed in a recent hurricane that hit Paris!"

But if you do, you might see this:

"A hurricane hit Paris, but fortunately people were evacuated before it could do any serious damage. Things should be back to normal now."

The key, of course, is that those kinds of disaster prevention elements would only be available in the late game.

To me, the issue of finding "the best" way isn't always a lack of choice but a lack of balanced choice. Why don't I stop conquesting and build up by culture? Because culture doesn't get me much compared to conquest.

 

[GoodGame]

I suspect these tweaks will be as easy as adding new civs with python (and the first ones). would love to see all of them. Month by Month turns seem more realistic.

 

[Guagle]

DH_Epic, how do you prepare for the Horde spawns? Normal Barbarian incursions are easy to fight off but the Horde, with that many units showing up at once, will knock most expansion plans completely off their tracks.
The damage from natural disasters should be reduceable by techs that provide better building strengths or through other means. They should not be gamebreakers, I agree. But bad things happen, your plans don't always go right. The straight through programmed linearity of most Civ games needs to be shaken up a little. That said, the same risks and dangers applied to the player should be applied to all the AI opponents.

I agree with you on this point. To me a little randomness to the game is necessary to prevent boredom and random (or semi-random) events would add a nice touch to the game.

Civ3 currently has this with volcanoes, plagues and diseases in flood plains and jungles, it just needs to be expanded a little.

 

[Volstag]

What would such natural disasters add to the gameplay? I'm not seeing what the benefits are. Sounds to me like something that would do little more than annoy players into reloading or provide a quick laugh when it happens to the AI.

I agree with Vael -- natural disasters are, IMO, nothing more than chrome or flavor. It doesn't add much, if anything, to the core gameplay.