Tips to make Civilization more realistic

[Julien]

I have been playing civilization since Civ 1 in the 1990's and spent particularly lots of time on Civ 4, which in my opinion is the best of the series (haven't played Civ 6 yet). I have an academic background in history and archeology, so I hope I can suggest a few helpful tips on how to make the game even more realistic without losing in fun. Note that I always play with real maps (mostly huge world map).

1) Start the game at 10,000 BCE instead of 4000 BCE

In all version, the game starts in 4000 BCE, which corresponds to the Late Neolithic period in Europe. This is when agriculture finally reached Britain and Scandinavia, 2500 years after it starting spreading to Southeast Europe. The Copper Age started around 5800 BCE in Southeast Europe and the Middle East and had spread to a large part of Europe by 4000 BCE. In East Asia and India, farming was also widespread by then. The Bronze Age started soon afterwards, around 3500 BCE (a few turns after starting the game).

It doesn't make much sense to start in 4000 BCE if we are going to research such technologies as agriculture, pottery, the wheel, animal husbandry, the calendar, mining, and so on. All these technologies would have been long acquired by 4000 BCE in places where ancient Eurasian civilizations arose.

2) Drop Paleolithic technologies

One of the things that doesn't make any sense is that we have to discover hunting, archery and sailing. Humans have been hunting since the time of Homo erectus one million years ago, long before Homo sapiens and Neanderthal even came into existence. Check this list of prehistoric inventions. Spears were invented 500,000 years ago and bows & arrows at least 65,000 years ago, before modern humans colonized the Middle East and Europe. Humans very reached Australia via Indonesia some 40,000 years ago and they were using boats to do so. So it is sure that sailing had been invented by then.

3) Adapt movement speed to the age and restrict movement in the wild

One thing that has long bothered me is that scouts or other units can explore territories extremely remote from their own civilization, or any civilization for the matter, as soon as the game starts. In a few turns Europeans can meet East Asians, before horse riding or the wheel were even invented. Explorers can stay in the middle of Siberia or in the desert for as long as they want with no food or connection to their country for centuries and even millennia. That doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, later in the game, units take years to cross Europe, even with horse-riding units, when in reality it would have taken a few weeks, so much less than a single turn in the game. We need to find a better balance for movements.

What I propose is that the movement range of each unit vary according to their historical era. In ancient times people didn't move much and would not have sought contact with distant cultures/civilizations at the other end of the world. Settlers especially would have spread very slowly. I would force all units to move only 1 square per turn, and require two turns to cross rivers and hills. They wouldn't be able to enter deserts and jungle at all except along a river on the square (like the Nile for the Egyptians). From classical times the movement would be similar to the current default, but with slower settlers (to avoid Greeks or Persians colonizing Siberia or other nonsense) and faster horse-riding units (at least two or three times the default range, as this is more in line with the real difference between a foot soldier and a horse rider). From industrial times, units would be twice faster, and from modern times even faster.

I don't think that roads are very important to increase the speed of horse riders. Mongols rode fast across the Eurasian Steppe without roads. Therefore I would remove the movement bonus for roads. Instead road connections would be required to trade with other civilizations, unless they have a maritime connection through a harbor. Trade would be possible between two civs if an intermediary civ with open borders has road connections linking the two. This way Europeans won't be able to trade with Amerindians until both have harbors, or with East Asians until all Central Asia has been colonized and a road network is established from China to Europe via Central Asia and the Middle East (for example, with the Silk Road in mind). Roads would still be required to connect resources and would provide higher income on any square that has one.

Additionally, units that leave the boundaries of their civilization or another civilization with open borders would lose HP at each turn and die within three turns if they aren't back to a country that can provide them with food. This way explorers won't be able to cross Siberia until at least some relay cities are founded there or they have modern vehicles that allow them to cross in one turn.

I am also in favor of explored squares of maps disappearing after a few turn of exploration until the development of cartography, as in Realism Invictus. It just doesn't make any sense that wild lands explored by some long dead people hundreds of years ago remain known if there is no way to record it.

The aim of these measures is to prevent contact between very remote civilizations on different continents for as long as possible, especially before Classical or Medieval times.

 

[Leyrann]

Like the things you're mentioning here, but I would like to point out that the paragraph on roads is in the game already basically from start to finish. And while I like the realism of slower units in the ancient era, this would strangle any warfare, which certainly did happen a lot in the ancient era already.

 

[Ryika]

Imho realism shouldn't really be a high priority in Civ games. Some examples you've provided sound like really bad ideas to me, design-wise:

2) Drop Paleolithic technologies -> The "goal" of these technologies is to provide you with decisions during the early game. Ideally, depending on your starting position, your choices in what to research first, should vary. Dropping those technologies would completely remove this gameplay element, for no real reason. One could make the argument that they could be replaced with a different system, but then I'd wonder why that's necessary. Because "technologies" are clearly abstractions for progress made in your empire, not meant to be taken literally.

3) Adapt movement speed to the age and restrict movement in the wild -> My question here is: It is "interesting" to have a long early-game without access to other Civilizations? That does of course depend a lot on the player, but in general, I'd say the average player probably wouldn't enjoy it that much. What's the joy in having to wait for a whole world of players to finish their turn when you don't have access to most of them for most of the game? And how would you prevent that Civilizations with better starting conditions than you run away with the game if there's no global element to the game?

"Additionally, units that leave the boundaries of their civilization or another civilization with open borders would lose HP at each turn and die within three turns if they aren't back to a country that can provide them with food. This way explorers won't be able to cross Siberia until at least some relay cities are founded there or they have modern vehicles that allow them to cross in one turn.

I am also in favor of explored squares of maps disappearing after a few turn of exploration until the development of cartography, as in Realism Invictus. It just doesn't make any sense that wild lands explored by some long dead people hundreds of years ago remain known if there is no way to record it."

-> These are just annoyances that don't really serve any purpose other than being annoying.

Overall, I think the sort of game you're envisioning would only be interesting for a very specific audience, but not for the wide array of players within the Civ Community.

 

[Leyrann]

On the topic of early technologies which were actually already known long before: I don't see why changing this up would be a problem. I agree a 10000 BC start would probably be better, or maybe 8000 BC, and with longer time spans for early turns. This way having techs like Agriculture, Pottery, Animal Husbandry etc would be closer to their actual date. Techs like Hunting - I'm not sure. It's always felt kinda off to me that they're in the tech tree, as if it didn't happen before. Maybe you could instead have a technology "Advanced Hunting" or "Tracking" that would allow you to build camps (though right now camps are with animal husbandry anyways). What's always stung me the most is the "the Wheel" tech. The wheel was discovered around 4000 BC, which is the game's start, but the only civ that I know of (that means II, IV, V and VI) that actually has it even available at the start is IV. All others have one or more techs you have to discover first. I can remember from V in particular that it often took me until something like 2000 BC or later before I bothered, as the tech wasn't that useful early game (the only thing it really did, iirc, was that it unlocked roads, and you generally didn't want those until you had cities big enough that you actually gained money from city connections anyways).

More specifically about spears and spearmen: I realize it would be weird to have too many units available at the start, and spearmen would qualify as "should not be available at the start". You could have a technology like "Warspears" though, that would unlock the spearman, with the idea behind it that that is the point where people started creating and using spears to kill one another. For archers, I could see a weak 1-range archer as replacement for the slinger. Would kinda make sense imo.

(I guess I really need to figure out how to mod...)

 

[dunkleosteus]

One thing we have to take into account is that different civilizations developed different technologies at different rates, so there is no one "true" way to handle them. That being said, we can generalize the course of history so that we can have a linear-enough progression for it to be functional.

If we are moving back to 10 000 BC, I am strongly of the opinion that we need way more ancient era techs and the ancient era needs to last way longer. I did some quick estimates for the classical era as it stands (based on iron working, horseback riding and a few other techs) and my estimate is that the classical era corresponds to around 1500 - 1000 BC. This is with the assumption that "iron working" refers to the dominance of ferrous metals after the near east bronze age collapse, rather than the ability to work with meteoric iron.

If we take the classical period to begin at 1500 BC, that means we either have 2500 years of ancient era (assuming 4000 BC start) and therefore 42% of the total time that has elapsed in the last 6000 years or if we take a 10 000 BC start, we have 8500 years of the ancient era, or 71% of the total time. When we talk about time scales that large, I think it's incredibly important that we have enough time in this era. If we look at how the world has changed politically and socially in the last thousand years, we can get an idea of how much can change in multiple thousands of years (granted, technology developed much more slowly) but it's still a vast amount of time to fight battles and for civilizations to rise and fall. 10 000 BC is as far before the current start of the game as the game is long, and we can't make light of that.


The ancient era tech tree as it stands leaves a lot to be desired. I think it could be extended by adding more interstitial techs and by having techs either "locked" by certain requirements or with denser tech requirements.

An example of an interstitial tech might be river boating. Wikipedia cites the earliest known canoe as being from around 8000 BC, so it would be a reasonable technology for our 10 000 BC start period. Boosted by settling on a river, it's a technology that represents a concerted effort to float goods or people on a river in order to transport them. It can have benefits such as increased trade ranged along rivers or giving scouting units increased movement along rivers. It's a small step, but I think a necessary and important one before a civilization can take to the waves: a simple wooden canoe is a far throw from a sea-going vessel, but it's a start.

Other technologies may need more steps in between. I think copper working should exist before bronze working, and it should reveal copper as a resource. I believe most metallic resources (even luxuries) should be hidden before certain techs unlock them. Ancient peoples weren't concerned with such things until metal working became more prevalent. I think copper should be a more common resource, and we should have resources for tin or some other component for making bronzes (+% increased production towards later bronze age units).

There are many, many innovations and developments that are important and could deserve recognition in Civ. It requires much more of the game to be spent in the early eras, but I personally am not opposed to this.

 

[Leyrann]

I think it's quite possible to start in 10000 BC without needing many more techs. If you'd go with some 100 years a turn from 10000-4000 BC, you'd be through it in 60 turns . Something like that would feel appropriate to me. Just enough to research Animal Husbandry, Pottery, Mining and the Wheel. You'd probably need some 4 techs more in total.

 

[dunkleosteus]

I'm not sure that accomplishes anything though. Doubling the span of the game without increasing its length seems wrong to me.

 

[masda_gib]

3) Adapt movement speed to the age and restrict movement in the wild

The movement speed is already adapted to age in that 1 turn reflects different timespans as the game progresses. I don't know the exact values but early turns are maybe 100 years and end-game turns are 1 year or something like that.

 

[Leyrann]

I'm not sure that accomplishes anything though. Doubling the span of the game without increasing its length seems wrong to me.

For me (and I believe for OP too) it feels like early development of civilization is too much crammed in a small timespan, with what should be 10 000 BC to 2000 BC instead happening between 4000 BC and 2000 BC. And let's be real - do you measure the span of the game in years, or in turns? To be fair it's mostly a flavour thing.

 

[civplay]

Well while we're at it, here's my ideal civ game addressing the same issues you presented:

You start as a village with families under your vassalage. The map starts out with more territory revealed and other nearby villages showing. The goal is to unite the villages into a city while maintaining contentment of the families, and founding new villages, loyal to you. If the families aren't content, they'll rebel. You can unite the villages through war, Religion/culture, or diplomacy/Commerce.

So you've united the villages into a city state. The map scales 7 hex tiles equal 1. So as the game continues, the map literally becomes smaller. Additionally you can keep up to 7 troops per tile because in reality its 7 tiles. Now you control a city, with the villages' total populations corresponding to the city's population. There are nearby city states, all of which are commanded by alternate leaders of your civ. Like so if you chose, America, you have the choice between Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Jefferson, or Reagan. And if you choose Washington, the leaders of the nearby city states would be Reagan and Jefferson.

Now you have to unite the city states into a single country. Your new settlers now found cities instead of villages. And the villages under your rule may rebel. Now once you accomplish that, the map will scale again, with your goal to be to unite the nearby countries into a United Kingdom (true world superpower). Map scales out. Now your goal is to unite the world.

Scouts/explorers: Instead of being a unit you move you choose a region for it to explore and 3 turns later the scout appears in your city and that region is revealed.

Science: Instead you have 2 tech trees. one discovers the big techs and is passive, decided by turns and your science output, trade routes, and your buildings/improvements/armies etc. The second tree you use gold like in civ 2, but only to research smaller techs, which are more like upgrades. Also I completely agree with the whole starting out with paleolithic tech and starting in 10,000 BC. But my ideal game would be very long in general. With a full games worth of turns taking place during your Paleolithic/ancient/classical village/ city state eras, another full game during the medieval/Renaissance/Industrial city state, country, united kingdom eras, and another full games worth in the modern/atomic/information world superpower.

Basically this game would not only be more historically accurate with the world getting smaller, technology being more passive, and more of a focus on internal conflict with civil wars being more prominent. i mean think about American history, French Indian war, American revolution, war of 1812, civil war, Vietnam war all have their fair share of internal conflicts. Also this game would just be more fun. More focus on diplomacy and planning strategically rather than micromanaging. Additionally the game would change subtly as you move up in difficulty. On low difficulties the game would be about keeping your subordinates content while conquering through war, religion, or diplomacy. But on higher difficulties it would be about appeasing your superiors and subordinates, while conquering and slowly bidding your time until your strong enough to supplant your superiors.

But like I said: ideal (dream) game. The AI wouldn't be able to engage in that level of diplomacy. Maybe in civ 8? lol

 

[Siptah]

Some months ago, I proposed this kind of pre-game for civ that starts in 10000 BC:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/expansion-extended-game.573946/

but I guess it takes too long and most people wouldn't be interested in playing through it before starting the proper game.

 

[Leyrann]

Well while we're at it, here's my ideal civ game addressing the same issues you presented:

You start as a village with families under your vassalage. The map starts out with more territory revealed and other nearby villages showing. The goal is to unite the villages into a city while maintaining contentment of the families, and founding new villages, loyal to you. If the families aren't content, they'll rebel. You can unite the villages through war, Religion/culture, or diplomacy/Commerce.

So you've united the villages into a city state. The map scales 7 hex tiles equal 1. So as the game continues, the map literally becomes smaller. Additionally you can keep up to 7 troops per tile because in reality its 7 tiles. Now you control a city, with the villages' total populations corresponding to the city's population. There are nearby city states, all of which are commanded by alternate leaders of your civ. Like so if you chose, America, you have the choice between Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Jefferson, or Reagan. And if you choose Washington, the leaders of the nearby city states would be Reagan and Jefferson.

Now you have to unite the city states into a single country. Your new settlers now found cities instead of villages. And the villages under your rule may rebel. Now once you accomplish that, the map will scale again, with your goal to be to unite the nearby countries into a United Kingdom (true world superpower). Map scales out. Now your goal is to unite the world.

Scouts/explorers: Instead of being a unit you move you choose a region for it to explore and 3 turns later the scout appears in your city and that region is revealed.

Science: Instead you have 2 tech trees. one discovers the big techs and is passive, decided by turns and your science output, trade routes, and your buildings/improvements/armies etc. The second tree you use gold like in civ 2, but only to research smaller techs, which are more like upgrades. Also I completely agree with the whole starting out with paleolithic tech and starting in 10,000 BC. But my ideal game would be very long in general. With a full games worth of turns taking place during your Paleolithic/ancient/classical village/ city state eras, another full game during the medieval/Renaissance/Industrial city state, country, united kingdom eras, and another full games worth in the modern/atomic/information world superpower.

Basically this game would not only be more historically accurate with the world getting smaller, technology being more passive, and more of a focus on internal conflict with civil wars being more prominent. i mean think about American history, French Indian war, American revolution, war of 1812, civil war, Vietnam war all have their fair share of internal conflicts. Also this game would just be more fun. More focus on diplomacy and planning strategically rather than micromanaging. Additionally the game would change subtly as you move up in difficulty. On low difficulties the game would be about keeping your subordinates content while conquering through war, religion, or diplomacy. But on higher difficulties it would be about appeasing your superiors and subordinates, while conquering and slowly bidding your time until your strong enough to supplant your superiors.

But like I said: ideal (dream) game. The AI wouldn't be able to engage in that level of diplomacy. Maybe in civ 8? lol

I would love something like this. There's been a lot of stuff in different games with "wide" being reigned in because it's superior to "tall" by nature. This is because more is better. There's no innate disadvantage to more, so different games create all kinds of mechanics that make expanding harder at some points. Early civs had corruption, which increased further away from your capital, civ4 used maintenance costs which became higher if you controlled more cities or cities further away from your capital, civ5 used the dreaded global happiness, civ6 uses increasing settler/builder costs and the need for more different luxery resources and amenities. On top of that, many of the civs (I don't know which ones exactly) use war weariness to dissuade from long wars. In real life, however, none of these systems (except war weariness) have a clear parallel. Instead, the reason that real life empires have a finite span and duration is that the larger an empire is, the more nations it encompasses (as in, a group of people that feel like a unity). And these nations, they'll want independance, because they want to govern themselves. So if the governing isn't done just right by their ruler, they'll revolt. This is probably one of the most important systems in real life that's stopped empire from spanning the globe (others mostly having to do with the finite life span of leaders, decadence and scheming, none of which you're going to get into a game well without making it the game's focus), yet it's barely represented in civilization.

I also agree with this post that it's kinda unnatural that the vast majority of the map is empty, save for some benevolent villages and ramping barbarians. In real life, people lived everywhere. They didn't all build cities and didn't all become empires, but they lived everywhere, and the only way that the more powerful nations could expand was either peaceful annexation or warfare. Basically the part the Europeans didn't really understand when they "colonized" the rest of the world (seriously, colonized? There were millions of people living there already).

 

[Chuma]

If you go back and look at the indigenous culture in Australia you will find they had mining and construction for thousands of years. There were trading routes and the local tribes in the north traded with their neighbours. Would be a long term project to mod this in though but if you had a good map you could play it on it would make the game much more in depth.

 

[zoundmine]

I don't know all this talking here about reality here and elsewhere how it can be addresed to keep a balance to a satisfying gameplay and reality factors. Of course the game would be unreal, because it's no reality. And it must be simplified because it's a game. What "more reality" would mean in chess? And how real it could be even having Brazil fighting Sumeria in 2000BC? Although the game it could embed some more reality factors. I agree making early exploration more difficult, and also finally change the name Barbarians it's really akward having England deal with barbarians in 1600 AD, change their name to bandits, and then at rebels at least after some eras. And also going back to time to 8000 it seems ok but it has a point only if it you make choices during that time. And that's the thing that's bothers me more in terms of reality in civ. Humanity always was advancing making choices and using the available resources it had. For example you could be able to enhance some techologies with the cost that you leave some of them behind. A cultural civ could enhance its culture but leaving some military aspects outside, that means ofcourse being able to have military enough to defend but not enough to conquer military the world at every phase of the game. It will also I think it would make the game more variable. It seems ridiculous having to catch one or two civs that are ahead in EVERYTHING! Military, culture, technology AND religion...

 

[Leyrann]

More tech trees. More variation.

Can't disagree there. That said, there's a point where the casual gamer doesn't like it anymore, and civilization is supposed to appeal to a wider audience.