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Steve Clark
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Colorado Springs, CO
Oct 1999
time: 22:15
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I just got done playtesting 3 hypothetical Civ3 games, according to the direction some wants Civ3 to be. Here’s the summary:
I downloaded a mod pack that has 32 civs to choose from, 16 original ones plus 16 user-defined ones. But when I started up the game in the usual 4000 bc, the only civ I could choose to play were the Mesopotamians. Also, the only map I could choose was the huge map of world with all of the resources (and latter civs) in their correct location since anything would not be historically accurate.
So I just wander around the Fertile Crescent, founded a few cities and colonies since I knew there was no one else around. I was forced to name the cities Ur, Jericho, etc, it didn’t give me any options otherwise.
Around 3200bc, I knew the Egyptians would be popping up nearby down in northeast Africa. Fortunately, I had some units there for their expected appearance and killed their settlers before they founded their first city. But wait, they automatically regenerated since we all know that the Ancient Egyptians did build their civilization. So I just stayed in my corner of the world, started to build the Ziggurat and was forced to watch the Egyptians build their Pyramid wonder, since that wasn’t an option for me. Come to think of it, apart from a few city improvements, I couldn’t build anything else. The Ziggurat was the only wonder (small or great) that applied to my civ that I was forced to start with.
As the turns went on, I watched my civ get destroyed and then regenerated as the Babylonians, then as the Assyrians and the Persians, but all limited to my part of the world. By about 400 bc, I was forced to be a vassal state of the Greeks and had to contribute to their success, even though I couldn’t actively do much of anything myself except to keep my handful of cities alive.
Then as the centuries went by, I just watched the date and sure enough, each of the newer civs appeared on the scene exactly when they supposed to, building units and wonders specifically attributed to that civ at exactly the time they were supposed to and watched the expected results of every single battle. And get this, they all behaved exactly according to history! For example, I saw the Mongols storm across the Steppes, I saw the rise of the British Navy, and I saw the Spanish colonize the New World; all happened right on schedule and in the right manner, all in their correct geographical location. I was thinking, I could have waited to have played the Americans when they become a nation in 1787. That would have been fun but that meant that I would have missed out on 5700+ years of history. As far as my original civ? I was long gone by now as a separate entity and just controlled a few cities on behalf of my conquerors.
So I started a new game and guess what? The exact same thing happened again.
So I started yet a another game and guess what? The exact same thing happened again.
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Steve Clark
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Colorado Springs, CO
Oct 1999
time: 22:15
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quote:
Originally posted by orange
Very well done 
However, you should have been able to choose the Chinese and Indus  |
That would be true. However, on a huge map of the world, they would be so far (tile-wise) from where I started that there wouldn't be any casual contact for quite a while or any historical contact until the Silk Route era, I believe. The Chinese cultural area, for example, wouldn't have any impact on the West until the Middle Ages.
But you understand my point. The goal of the game is to take a civ (just pick a color, the rest is irrelevant) and go through the steps needing to win. Civ is a strategy game set in a historical context, it is not a historical simulator nor should there be any attributes or events of a civ that would lead to predictability and thus, limiting replayability.
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Grim Legacy
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War Machine, Barbaric King, Relentless, Remorseless, Guiltless and Unclean!
Aug 2001
time: 06:15
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While I can appreciate the humor in this post, I do think that it isn't very helpful to ridiculize the 'realist's stance' like this. It's easy to use the same method to discredit the other faction:
I started the game with my favorite options: no gravity, turbolaser settlers and rampant alien abduction in the year 3400NI.
The turbolasers made quick work of the Ixlaim civ, who had mere mass drivers, so that I could quickly found 2 colonies, which defaulted to size 10 and had the needed improvements so that I didn't have to worry about micromanaging that... etc etc
:P
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01-10-2001 23:16
Very well put, totally agree. 
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