Why no game rules available?

[paxis]

Ones you buy a board game in the box you find a big game rules book. In this book you find every rules and mechanics for the game. Why not for computer games like Civilization?

Now we have to do “revers engineering” of the game. Finding out what the devs have implemented in the code. Looking in .xml files. It takes years !

Why we don’t get complete “game rules” by buying the game?

 

[Chefofrats]

Because most people do not care about those rules, and it makes no economic sense for a business to invest in a resource that only the minority of players would find useful, or even look at? And the developers would have to keep updating it.

I mean, I've played all the Civilization series games since the early 1990s, and do not know and have never known a single formula behind any of the mechanics, and yet I've been having fun for almost 30 years now. Even though on this forum many players are into theorycrafting, efficiency etc., they do not represent the marginal Civ player, for whom the game as a product is prepared and packaged (be it physically or digitally).

 

[Victoria]

Great answer from @Chefofrats and valid on a maintenance side of things but I think the mechanics as explained on this site are above and beyond often what an old paper set of rules provided. that the game does provide some vestige of information in the civilopaedia. For example air combat and interception is explained there if you can find the right place. It is just written very simply without examples . The chance of getting a get out of jail free card in monopoly is not explained nor why it is that amount of chance but it was thought of and tested and decided upon. When we roll 2-3 dice in a game are we understanding the odds involved? They are not explained. Rock bands are explained and in game tool tips even provide us with (slightly incorrect) statistical outcomes. There is subtly a lot of help there. Some things like espionage are quite misleading and not well explained (for example is your chance of escape better in a city with a harbour or without?

So like most things there is a middle ground but they are not going to document things that require a lot of maintenance but they do make changes to the civilopaedia each patch.

There is an onus on the provider to produce guidelines and they do so but it is not in spades. At least what they do produce is accurate and maintained for the most part which is mor ethan what can be said for the wikipaedia which I have updated perhaps 10 things on in the last month and cannot be bothered with many things, often because some other author disagrees and that is just a big time waster.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Games providers used to spend a lot of money creating manuals that no one read .....

 

[Browd]

The manual for the base (vanilla) game, as originally released, can be found on Steam, but given the numerous post-release patches, and two expansions, it is only useful for the basics.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

The original game actually came with a book (in pdf) that you could read. Sadly, I remember reading it in the fall of 2016 days before we could play Of course a lot of that information is seriously outdated. I agree that it would be pointless to keep updating that book, but they sure could do a better job with making the civilopedia more useful to new players.

EDIT: Jinx, Browd.

 

[MrRadar]

Why we don’t get complete “game rules” by buying the game?

Because nowadays they are never complete before some Ultimate Platinum version is released. And by then either there is somewhere some compilation of the most relevant info done by the fans or everybody already found out everything they wanted and do not need such a thing anymore.

 

[Ownsya]

Some things like espionage are quite misleading and not well explained (for example is your chance of escape better in a city with a harbour or without?

Well don't leave me hanging, does it? This is a mechanic I've been struggling with. In some games my spies seem to always get killed, in others not so much. Does anyone understand how spy survival/escape mechanics work? (beyond the obvious bonuses from promotions and whether a spy is counterspying, I mean details)

 

[Victoria]

Does anyone understand how spy survival/escape mechanics work

No. I investigated it but the issue is you need at least 1K+ sample missions to get a good idea of what is going on with any certainty and this is an annoyance that you would have to go to those lengths. I did enough (400 missions) to understand the basics of espionage missions(why they fail more than they quote they do) but the escape route is confusing. there are different rolls for differing numbers of escape routes and some confusing parameters around it you can make assumptions on but that is all they are. I only started looking at it after about 300 missions then realised the enormity of testing it and gave up.
precisely why I used it in an example, not to tease but because it does displease.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Because most people do not care about those rules, and it makes no economic sense for a business to invest in a resource that only the minority of players would find useful, or even look at? And the developers would have to keep updating it.

I mean, I've played all the Civilization series games since the early 1990s, and do not know and have never known a single formula behind any of the mechanics, and yet I've been having fun for almost 30 years now. Even though on this forum many players are into theorycrafting, efficiency etc., they do not represent the marginal Civ player, for whom the game as a product is prepared and packaged (be it physically or digitally).

In general terms, I hold this position in disdain. Hiding rules is antithetical with purporting that the game in question is a strategy title.

There is nothing wrong with choosing to ignore tutorials/not learn the rules. There is something wrong with designers who think that implementing rules without making the rules accessible is okay. It is not a respectable development choice and I do not respect when developers make it.

To be fair, you do have to draw the line at some level of detail, and expect some player inference. Telling players they'll roll 2d6 does not require telling them the odds of each number rolled...but the game shouldn't hide or misrepresent the odds (Civ 6 actually displays wrong % sometimes).

When Civ 6 released it wouldn't even consistently tell you the reason you couldn't build a unit (sometimes units would be greyed out, other times they would simply not appear at all). That's not okay.

Games providers used to spend a lot of money creating manuals that no one read .....

Good games make the information the players need to know accessible through the UI or otherwise in-game, relatively quickly. I know it's been over a decade since Firaxis invested in a UI team that considers end user experience for mouse & keyboard, but it IS a thing in games.

Plus in this day & age you could go the Dominions 5 route and provide an online manual. Civ does this to some extent with the civlopedia, and that's where more advanced information they fail to provide should exist.

Not every game has equivalents of the Civ 6 espionage weirdness.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I know that they'd normally be outdated before they even made it into your hands, but yeah part of me kind of misses the big spiral bound rule book. Fast online patching that came with high speed internet connections have made those pointless (and a needless cost). Getting a game like that made it seem more like an event.

I do agree that we need better online/ingame documentation though.

Somewhere, in a nearly forgotten box of stuff I haven't opened in ten years, I still have a few of those fold out "tech posters" from Alpha Centauri, CivII, etc. Those were cool.

 

[Victoria]

So they have saved money by relying on sites like these but they do not provide the sites with the answers they crave.
A bit rough.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

So they have saved money by relying on sites like these but they do not provide the sites with the answers they crave.
A bit rough.

While more convenient, one of the things that annoyed me about the switch to digital media was that the cost for the company dropped substantially (shipping, layout and printing, disk materials, warehousing, etc.) but the price for the customer remained the same.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Good games make the information the players need to know accessible through the UI or otherwise in-game, relatively quickly.

Agreed yes - intuitive in game makes much more sense than an external manual.

 

[rockhpi]

I can see the OP's point. I've been playing since Civ 2 (and Civ 6 since its release) but there are still very big concepts that I'm learning about for the first time when I run across them in these forums. I think there is SO much going on in Civ that cramming it in the civilopedia isn't sufficient. I'd pay a bit more for a hardcopy manual.

 

[Victoria]

I guess the approach also helps fund the streamers. It was nice of @PotatoMcWhiskey to thank this site in one of his educational sessions.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Still, you shouldn't have to go to third parties to find out what the rules are.

 

[Victoria]

Still, you shouldn't have to go to third parties to find out what the rules are.

This is a very key thing. What are the rules.
Dictionary wise they are what we can and cannot do.
Firaxis is doing this I think. They do not explain the mechanics ... but the rules?

 

[Equilin]

I'd say Civilopedia is generally a good rulebook. I spent the first 2-3 hours in Civ5 jumping through it, and for the next 10-20 opened it regularly. Once i touched Civ6 i also opened it regularly on mechanics not in 5 (districts, specific GPs, etc).

 

[Morningcalm]

The Civilopedia is a poor substitute for the actual rules I would say. A lot of the actual mechanics of how the culture victory works are not explained, for example.

Does Civ VI's tutorial work well for new players? I haven't had a friend be a guinea-pig for me on that one.