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The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

leidenmedievalistsblog.nl

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Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#11

Post by ThePadawan »

publicola1990 wrote: post #4

Even modern city builders are inaccurate in the sense that timelines of how long it takes to build things aren't Modelled correct. Plus organic city growth is rarely simulated. Cities skylines for example has no concept of slums. Also the annoying Western/Eurocentrism. Eg: See the recent game Dorfromantik, its aesthetically pleasing, it is rustic european scenery, but why isn't it not set in Indonesia or Ecuador or U…

> Eg: See the recent game Dorfromantik, its aesthetically pleasing, its rustic european scene, but why isn't it not set in Indonesia or Ecuador or Uzbekistan?

That seems a bit harsh judgement for a game with a German name, made by 4 German game design students living in Berlin, with funds from the German state [0].

[0] https://toukana.itch.io/

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#12

Post by svachalek »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #2

The city builder has its origins far back in the 1990s in the combination of the strategy genre and the management genre, leading to games such as Sim City (1989), Caesar (1992) and Age of Empires (1997). Utopia for Intellivision/Aquarius came out in 1982. It was one of my favorite games growing up. I highly recommend it if you're into these kinds of games, or retro gaming. I guess I was retro gaming when I played it…

Interesting. We actually had an Intellivision back in the day, but not this game. I think I would have loved it.

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#13

Post by duxup »

I always thought city builders are a weird mix of sort of free market / authoritarian beliefs:

In most city builder games involve some planning, incentives provided, and people just show up, do their thing, growth is endless, build a business, and there you go.

On the other hand in most city builders the player makes all the decisions and can act at will with no regard to his local citizens ;)

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#14

Post by mpfundstein »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #6

I would love a building game where you can't build roads. All of those building games so far allowed that, but I think it would be more fun to just allow for constructing building, and roads/pathway would form depending on their connectivity inside the production chain. I.e. you wouldn't connect your farm to a butcher, but pathways would form and eventually turn into street based on the amount people from dependent s…

The settlers.did this AFAIK

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#15

Post by paavohtl »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #6

I would love a building game where you can't build roads. All of those building games so far allowed that, but I think it would be more fun to just allow for constructing building, and roads/pathway would form depending on their connectivity inside the production chain. I.e. you wouldn't connect your farm to a butcher, but pathways would form and eventually turn into street based on the amount people from dependent s…

This is exactly what Foundation [1] (which was also shown in a screenshot in the article) does.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#16

Post by mcjoken »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #6

I would love a building game where you can't build roads. All of those building games so far allowed that, but I think it would be more fun to just allow for constructing building, and roads/pathway would form depending on their connectivity inside the production chain. I.e. you wouldn't connect your farm to a butcher, but pathways would form and eventually turn into street based on the amount people from dependent s…

Civilization 6 does this a bit, where roads are constructed by running trade routes, not built manually.

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#17

Post by svachalek »

pphysch wrote: post #8

The basic problem is the disparity in control mechanisms. As a city-builder player, you have central planning capabilities that would make Stalin jealous--and were completely unattainable in the relevant time period due to poor communications technology. One solution is to make "social power"/"control"/"influence" an actual gameplay mechanic, rather than leaving it entirely to the players cognition/dexterity. Lack of…

According to TFA however, one flaw in medieval city builders is that they are too organic, when actual villages were centrally planned. The more major one however is that growth was apparently near hopeless, which would really make them play like a different genre entirely.

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#18

Post by 1123581321 »

Good article. The difficulty with simulating these plots and new settlements is that the player’s interests aren’t the same as any individual freeman’s. Letting the player map out fields could certainly be done, but it wouldn’t meaningfully change the game as conventional city-builder players of any skill also have a layout in mind before they begin the game.

Players also value a high quantity of content and replayability, again at odds with the interest of a medieval freeman, churchman or lord who preferred consistency to novelty for the reasons mentioned in the preface.

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#19

Post by Aperocky »

paavohtl wrote: post #15
littlecranky67 wrote: post #6

I would love a building game where you can't build roads. All of those building games so far allowed that, but I think it would be more fun to just allow for constructing building, and roads/pathway would form depending on their connectivity inside the production chain. I.e. you wouldn't connect your farm to a butcher, but pathways would form and eventually turn into street based on the amount people from dependent s…

This is exactly what Foundation [1] (which was also shown in a screenshot in the article) does. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/

Looks like it's windows only..

Re: The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

#20

Post by whywhywhywhy »

0xdada wrote: post #7
sprafa wrote: post #3

It’s interesting and most likely not applicable - for the very same reasons you cant get realistic sword fighting (or even street fighting) in most Hollywood movies: realistic fighting doesn’t look as exciting as the fake thing. Glad the author sees into that very clearly. * Could be an interesting art game tho as someone pointed out below

> Medieval villagers were often living on the edge of subsistence. Agricultural surpluses were skimmed by the church and the feudal lords. Bad harvests, banditry, warfare and disease might decimate a village community at any time. Dwarf Fortress has shown that this would in fact be quite exciting, but it would probably be a lot more niche.

> but it would probably be a lot more niche

Dwarf Fortress also proving that if you hit the correct niche that your game can get a huge following if you're scratching an itch people never knew they had.

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