22-05-1999 19:51									#1
	War Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

This is from an e-mail I sent Mark recently, we decided to post this on the Forum so everybody can state their opinion.

Now, on to War. Some time ago this was discussed somewhat on the old BB, where I expressed the view that wars in most civ-type games where very unrealistic regarding length and fiercety. If I remember correctly my views where met with a general approval but no details were agreed upon. I´m afraid that you´ll find few details here either, but I thought I´d bring it up again and see what we´d come up with. Now, although I´d be very interested in seeing wars depicted realisticly I don´t see how this can be accomplihed without putting some serious restrictions on players. The most obvious problem is of course the timescale. I don´t know if this has been decided upon yet, but I imagine it will reflect more or less the one found in other games of this type, i.e. a turn length of 10 to 20 years until the modern age. So if we´d follow the average length of wars most of them would last less than a turn, which could be a little tricky to accomplish :-). The second problem is the severity of wars, in civ and other games figthing till the death is the norm, not the exception as it should be. Unfortunaetly I haven´t got a solution, but here are some thoughts on this. Now, as you probably know by know playing strategic board-games has been a hobby of mine for quite awhile. So here are some examples of how things are handled in some of them, I don´t knw how helpful this is, but maybe it´ll trigger someones mind into a aha moment, as Mark says. First, it is the declaration of war (DoW). Most games put a penalty on this, so players don´t walk into a war unless they really want it (or have to). This can be in the form of a stability minus, economical cost or simply VP cost, or a combination of this. Many games make a distinction on who you´re declaring war against, so declaring war against a ally gives more penalty than otherwise and some games lessen the cost if you have a Casus Belli (latin for ‘cause of war’) against the one you´re declaring war against, sometimes even making it a pre-requisite to declare war. Other games ban you to declare war in certain circumstance, such as if you have a Non-Aggression Treaty with the country. Next, unto the length of war. This is handled differently depending on the game, mainly on it´s time-scale. The consensus is that games with loe time-scale (less than a year per turn) put little restrictions on this, those with higher time-scale have some restrictions. The most common restriction is the longer the war lasts the graver it´s consequences is (in economical and/or stability terms). Another method is to play the war out entierly in one turn, i.e. there is a specific war phase at the end of each turn where all active wars are fought through numerous rounds, most often until it ends. So where does this leave us? I´ve no idea :-), but I think this is something we should think about because it’s a big issue on how the game will play like, do we want the common, all-out, ages-long wars seen in other games and known by players, or do we want to be bold a make a more realistic system, but restricting players ability to wage wars in the process? Personally I´m more interested in the second choice, but as I´ve no idea on hw to accomplish this I´m unable to force the issue at the moment.

	22-05-1999 20:44									#2
	Tired of ads?

I do not see as many problems as you do, but maybe that's because I never saw CIV primarily as a war game and so could live quite happily with many of it's abstractions.

The "fight until death" seems to be no problem at all - the "death" meaning nothing else than the military formation as such is disbanded and no longer having any impact on the strategic balance, while the individual soldiears are quite alive (as farmers). So it's quite feasable to kill off units, and I even felt the CIV1 solution of "you or me - one must die" perfectly acceptable on this time scale.

What I feel is more important is the interdependence between the people and the armies - and especially the fact, that over long periods in history it simply didn't exist. In the middle ages, few people were concerned by whose duke's army fought against whose earl's knights. The same was true for the seven years war, when only the leaders of the countries had a real interest in warfare. When nationalsim began to rise, this was an entirely different story (and, of course earlier on when religion gave cause for war).

According to epoch / government, this should be taken into account when giving certain disadvantages for times of war.

	22-05-1999 22:29									#3
	Inflate your Upload Space

Hrafnkell:

The first point, I think, Is that Civ doesn't make war nearly as Expensive as it really is. Wars in Clash should Generally be very expensive. For a war shy of total war, it just plain shouldn't Pay to fight too long. Also our internal politics and representation of the people's desires should be another limiting factor on how long wars can be fought.

Also, good diplomatic AI should limit the length of wars. How? Because when other powers see a civ gaining too much they will provide polite reminders that the balance of power Cannot change too much or they will have to take action.

As I said in the character thread:
[i]First of all I'm with Dominique on the basic point that we just have to go with game balance here, and somewhat ignore reality. One factor that would make these things more palatable is if we just go by Turns and forget Dates. ( Or alternatively, do this until we get to the point that we might have one turn = 1 year and arbitrarily call this 1800 or something. ) This helps with the ridiculously slow movement rates for military units problems also.[i/]

All the arbitrary limitations you talked about from other games should IMO not be necessary. The political / happiness modeling and AI should provide penalties enough.

Dominique:

I think I already repeated some of the points you made... oops. On the to-the-death issue I think H was talking about the state (civ) level, not the unit level...

	23-05-1999 09:21									#4
	Increase Your PM Length

I think many of you are missing something very important: realism always detracts from fun. I am not saying that if forced to choose between realism and fun you should choose fun, I am saying that you are always choosing between real and fun.

Conflict is fun. The definition of a game always includes conflict. You want the game to constanly force players to compete directly against each other. It is not fun to tend your rice fields, it is fun to burn your enemy's rice fields. Games include economic situations because making the choice between a little more farming and a little more farming is a hard choice. Ideally the player does both constanly and it is only a matter of percentages.

Remember that while a few people do find simulation type situations to be amusing most people demand a game and a game demands conflict. Conflict with the computer (your own goverment, random events) is mainly filler for the true battle, the battle between the human players. I have only finished one game of single player Alpha Centauri and I will never play another. However I do play the game as much as possible. I do play multiplayer games constanly. Just last week or so I played on battle.net for 11 hours straight. I found I play my best after 9 hours of warming up.

However I don't play single player games unless the game has a good plot. I doubt that Clash is a plot based game.

I know that this goes against what everyone else here seems to think but I just had to let it out. I see the whole game (and every other game) as just dressing for the player vs player conflict.

War is interaction.

	23-05-1999 13:46									#5
	Got spare money?

Glak,

I'm so very glad you wrote that post, because it toucehs the very essence of what Clash could or should become. Also, I think you are absolutely right with some of your points, but... I think you totally underestimete the possibility of other players preferring a different style of playing

You say, all the games in the end are about conflict, and conflict is fun. In a way, you are right. What many people forget, however, is that there are many more ways of having a conflict than actually waging war. IMHO this was one of the big secrets of success of CIV1: That here, you had war only as one option, but you could easily win economically or by ways of science WITHOUT using those only as prerequisites for a military campaign.

As opposed to you, I actually like tending the rice fields. I always looked at warfare in civlike games as a necessity, not as the main fun. Fun for me was to make my empire flourish. To be better. To be unattackable. To be supreme in science.

Sure, I like the military aspects (Hey, my father's a general, what can I do? ), but I have the Frederick Wilhelm attitude towards it: I LOVE to build those armies, but I hate to really USE them, knowing my oh-so-colorful-uniformed guys come back in tatters...

So, I think

a) you are right that there's a trade-off between realism and fun
b) you are NOT right that war is the only fun in such a game. Wouzld you replace "military conflict" by "overall competition", I'd gladly agree.



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Well, if we took the bones out they wouldn't be crunchy, would they?