4057

Brilliant, as is to be expected from you.

4058

I think that’s a great idea!

I know you’re not primarily on here to shill your game, but it is definitely on my list and I’m looking forward to it’s release. ;)

Edit: of course the downside is that you have to code two different AIs, or at least put enough effort into it to fool me.

4059

That’s absolutely not the case though. It’s definitely a bit more gamey because the “geopolitical” assessment is not exactly well developed, but you absolutely are able to generate game long alliances in Civ4. And the wardec/demand/religion RNG just sets up along what lines those will be if you understand Civ4 AI diplomacy. It is true however, that manipulating diplomacy into changing the status quo is something much more difficult and dependent on the specific AIs left around.

4060

So I want to think through some more of the differences between Civ and EU. Civ is clearly more focused on building up and then tearing down (in war), with many people completely avoiding the latter.

  • As has been mentioned, there are many more entities in an EU4 game. You couldn’t really do this in a turn-based game unless you did simultaneous turns – it would just take too long.
  • EU4 also has much less building up to do – going tall is very limited. As such, you have to focus on expansion, and there’s no empty land to take – it’s all occupied by AI entities, which need to be fought or diplomatically eliminated. This is a very different process than the Civ one.
  • EU4 doesn’t bother bother filling your time with building roads or land improvements, or assigning workers in cities. In fact, the focus is never on the land itself (squares or hexes) but on counties i.e. logical entities that represent politico-geographic power. This is a huge difference, as it means the focus is no longer unit-centric either. Fog of war is based on distance from your counties, allowing you to see what is going on around you quite clearly and what your enemies are plotting, and to plot against them.
  • EU4 is therefore a political game (focusing almost exclusively on external politics) first and foremost. War is one of the ways to expand, but it’s not particularly well developed. In fact, the main innovation in war is the limitation of it so you can’t gobble up everything right away but must chip away at enemies gradually. Civ, on the other hand, is a resource management/building/warmaking game, with a little bit of politics on top.
  • Now for my personal opinion: from my perspective, I would have preferred EU4 to have fictional entities rather than historical ones – kinda like the animal world option in CK2. Because one thing EU4 is not, is a simulation of world affairs as of 1444. Instead, it’s a fictional politics/conquer the world game inspired by the political entities as present in 1444, with some real-world events thrown in for fun. EDIT: In actual history, countries were far more stable and had far less fighting in this time period due to the balance of power. So the game really simulates complete fiction as giant blobs grow over time. Which is fine, but in my mind it’s really important to highlight what the game is and what it isn’t.

EDIT: I think a good tl;dr is that EU4 is a politics/war game, whereas Civ is a builder/war game. They’re really completely different sub-genres.

4061

Terrific news. That’s perfect. I want AI players in a game modeling history to “stay in character” a bit, I hate when AIs play like they’re playing a boardgame. If my civilization has had friendly and fruitful relations with the Persians going back millennia, I don’t want Cyrus to suddenly turn into a psychopath because I’m about to hit a win condition. It completely pulls me out of the game narrative that has been built up over the many hours of a campaign.

Just a personal preference so the fact that you have options for both is amazing.

4062

I think the way they’ve put it is that they do not attempt to simulate history, they want to make a game that is historically authentic. So you get things like royal marriages, the HRE, personal unions, the rise and decline of the Ottomans, the colonization of the New World and the establishment of trade companies, coalitions against aggressive Great Powers, the Reformation, religious wars, etc. The game brings all those elements to the table but it’s not trying to simulate history. I would say the intent is more that a skillful player can take it off the rails and create their own timeline.

That being said, things like world conquest aren’t possible without abusing/exploiting game systems and mechanics and those tend to get patched up. You can blob more than was historically possible though, absolutely.

4063

I think that’s still overselling it. They haven’t figured out any way to come close to anything resembling real history of the time period other than sticking some random real-world events in. In other words, it’s not doing history, and it’s not doing alt-history either. They’re not simulating any of the forces that would have really prevented a country from taking over many other countries in the time period (which existed aplenty). And honestly, not only is it really hard to do, but given the focus of the game, you can’t really fault them for that. There just isn’t much to do if you eliminate taking over countries and counties in various ways – that is the game. They could transform the game into a country-management simulator, where just holding on to what you’ve got is a challenge (ie. closer to real history), but that would be a completely different game. Victoria 2, from what I understand, is closer to that, and to a certain degree I think CK2 is too.

EDIT: re-reading your post, I’m not sure if I’m debating with you or agreeing with you.

4064

More specifically

For the RNG demand thing, different AIs will stop that at different levels of positive relations and/or power. And acquiescing is actually useful to build relations in cases. It is true that it’s not linked to any goals (outside of join our war requests) though.

And actually yes, you can do it as a human too! It’s part of play at high difficulties. The AI tracks a decaying gift/tribute value and time since request. At low relations (again, different for different AIs) this counts as a tribute demand (with a diplo hit) and also checks against power. At higher relations it counts as a gift and is just checked against given value. Knowing this can let you slingshot harder by knowing you can get some free minor tech or gold to fund deficit research!

Wardecs can be random, but usually not (and it can snowball due to AI “dogpile” wardecs which is a thing). Also a wardec at friendly is only possible if they were planning a war at a lower relation before things ticked up.

4065

Much of this diplomatic weakness comes from the fact that there is only one long-range goal for a Civ game, and that is to win. As a result, there really isn’t much that needs to be done other than weakening your closest competitors. There are no medium-term goals to be accomplished via diplomacy. Ironically, because there is no goal in EU4, it opens up short and medium-term goals, and Paradox pushes this along with their mission system. Both the player and the AIs are therefore assigned things they want to accomplish (the player by themselves, by missions, or by achievements), and that allows for goals to be aligned between the player and various entities. Very little of this layer exists in Civ games, both because of the lack of goals and the lack of available entities.

One way to ameliorate this would be for Civ to scrap its victory conditions and switch to victory points. Victory points could be awarded based on accomplishing a mix of secret and known missions. Missions could be to reach a certain tech first, make a race lose a certain city, etc. There would now be reason to collaborate with AIs and try to achieve certain common short-term goals. This would also make it ok to not be the strongest player. You don’t need to dominate in any one aspect to accomplish your goals.

In general, I find that games of Civ where you’re not the dominant player tend to be the best ones, because you then have to think about how to whittle down the strongest nation(s). If the AI cannot put up a fight, there’s really no thinking required about strategic goals, and diplomacy is useless. What the diplomatic model is missing is the ‘chunking’ of fights: let’s take down this one city, and then sue for peace. It’s doable within the diplomatic model even of Civ 4 but it’s crude, where it should instead be the default.

EDIT: Needless to say, Civ 6’s weak AI means none of this is remotely possible. Alpha Centauri and Civ 4, as the best of the Civ series IMO, come closest to being political games in addition to builder/war games. Their AI mods make them even better in that respect.

4066

I kind of want to get into the “simulating history” vs “historically authentic” and how what we’re really talking about is how we feel history has gone from our current perspective, and what role games and popular culture have in forming our conception of history, but (1) the conversation here is already going strong in a different direction that is also good and (2) I already put out two walls o’ text in this thread and that’s enough for today!

4067

This is the camp I’m in for sure.

4068

Well, yes and no. There has to be an algorithm, but that is quite different from its being based upon certainty and transparency.

I think the best way for me to explain this is to use a game from another genre – Out of the Park Baseball, especially in career mode. You draft a player, knowing things like your scout’s assessment of his talent and his personality. And what happens with this player through his development and his eventual (hopefully) major league career is a matter of numbers under the hood, algorithms. But sometimes the super talent with a terrible personality turns into a superstar, sometimes he is just a PITA bust. The good talent with superior personality could be a bust, too, but the odds are different.

Now, if you took the conventions of 4X/grand strategy games and applied it to that game, you’d probably be adding up coaching bats to get fill the box to 100, and then you’d get a good hitter. Or you would choose a new manager, and the screen would say pitching +28 fielding -3. And know that those modifiers would be applied for the coming season. Or you would draft two pitchers pronto because the third pitcher in line will be the one you already know will blow away the league.

History-based games could let you make all kinds of decisions that were actually made throughout time, aware of both the risks and possible upsides. But again, I understand why game makers do not do this. So many customers hate RNG with a passion. However, for me, any sense of realism is lost without RNG. At which point Civ VI’s district placing puzzle is just about top of the line as far as enjoyment goes.

4069

Not expanded, but revamped. They removed the warmongering system in the base game and replaced it with a grievance system with the Gathering Storm expansion and I like it much better than the warmogering system.

4070

I generally agree with this sentiment from an experiential perspective. However, it’s important to point out that RNG virtually disables the human ability to plan ahead. Since political games (“grand strategy”) are so much about manipulation of the AI entities to accomplish the player’s aim, randomness needs to be layered in carefully, or you risk destroying the foundation.

4071

I’m not sure that this really disagrees with me. To continue the baseball sim comparison, it would ruin the game if, over time, it appeared that pretty much anything could happen. First round picks were no more likely to be successful than last round picks. Players with personality problems in the past were no more likely to cause problems in the future than anyone else. Players hurt frequently in the past were pretty much as likely to miss this season as anyone else.

But that does not translate into a need for “accumulate X points, which can be gained through clearly defined diplomatic actions, and you then obtain a specific, 100% predictable result.” In system after system of the game.

Which is to say, one of the plusses for me in Civ VI is that, although you can see diplomatic points in relation to a rival, that only correlates with their opinion of you, it does not always define it. Especially early game. My preference would be, however, to skip the points, simply list positive factors, and have a higher level of unpredictability. Especially in systems like technology, district efficiency, and great person generation.

4072

This is a great idea

4073

What you’re talking about really is that in most “civilization” games the supposed people living under your thumb are virtual slaves (or wooden meeples) with virtually no autonomy. And that’s because Civ games are really just computerized board games with a whole lot more moving pieces.

And you know Paradox games are the same… just ^10 or so. They run on a “one turn per day” system, so turns can go by so fast it “feels” like real time, and virtually all the systems are automated so you don’t have to assign peasant tasks for every province.

It would be fun to make a “pixel 4x” game, where you have thousands and thousands of pixel people, populous style, running around a large game board, whose behavior you could influence but not directly control.

4074

That’s the god-game approach. The problem is that it works only to a very limited degree: see Populous, Black & White, Dungeon Keeper, Majesty etc. If designing a well-balanced, good strategic system is very hard, designing an indirect strategic system is that much harder.

4075

The next installment of the frontier pass is coming. I will be very disappointed if they didn’t add a new wonder that allows me to build a stately pleasure dome.

4076

Anyone play Civ 6 on the Switch? I see that the base game is only $19.99 (CDN) and the DLC pack is currently at its lowest price ever on the eShop at 60% off. I assume that everything is touch screen compatible.