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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

#111

Post by tomwojcik »

jonshariat wrote: post #98
Arnavion wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Pharaoh (mentioned in the previous paragraph) did actually have taxmen that would go out and collect taxes, and could be ambushed and killed by the people if they were sufficiently upset by the living conditions.

I learned so much from that game as a kid: Taxes, real estate values, city planning issues, money management, so many more

Pharaoh, Cleopatra, Zeus, Poseidon, Stronghold, Tzar: The burden of the crown, Theocracy, Settlers, SimCity, Cossacks, AoE2, HoMM3... There were many great city builders/strategy games back when we were kids :) and I owe them a lot as well. I'm glad we havent been raised in an era of battle royals.

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

#112

Post by drran »

max_alquzt wrote: post #70
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…

Ostriv! It is developed by one guy and incredibly addictive. Set in the 18th century.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/773790/Ostriv/

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

#113

Post by afterburner »

DaedPsyker wrote: post #64
dragontamer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hearts of Iron (3 in particular) One of the biggest problems with playing as the USA in Hearts of Iron is that you need to actually convince your Democracy / citizens that its worthwhile to go to war. And unless you click the "Crisis of Democracy" button (aka: turn yourself into a dictatorship), you don't actually have full control over the policies of your country. Which is why its more fun to play as Germany / Hitl…

I think HOI problem (more familiar with 4) is that it feels much more half baked. US Congress is mostly click a few event popups, click a few policy stuff in a menu and see the congress members just flip. It's more shoehorning it into the HOI system. I think you could make the process fun, but in paradox style games where you need to generalise a system to fit everywhere in the world, it can fall flat.

> but in paradox style games where you need to generalise a system to fit everywhere in the world

Interesting that you say this, because EU4 is filled to the brim with region-specific mechanics (to the point where it's actually kind of annoying).

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

#114

Post by jorblumesea »

> the demography of many European villages remained relatively stable between the twelfth and the eighteenth century

I don't think this is true. Medieval demographics is a very interesting subject and seems to have fluctuated a fair amount. Medieval populations doubled between 1100 and 1300.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography#High_Middl...

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

#115

Post by freemint »

finwhat wrote: post #104

I wonder how much of our focus on growth in 'city builder' games stems from the US's past with colonization, and its current cultural heft. if the americas and 'virgin' (i.e. easily depopulated) areas existed, would this concept be so popular?

I personally doubt it. The 4x play loop emerges naturally once you start to populate an empty map. There is also enough excuses about historic (pre medieval) colonialism that this give similar justification independent from whatever happened in the USA.

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

#116

Post by cperciva »

at_a_remove wrote: post #102

Hrm. My opinion is that complete accuracy isn't all that fun. Folks have used tax records to do analysis of, say, how many farmers it takes in a village for a blacksmith to be present, and so on and so forth. It was a lot more than you might imagine. On the other hand, looking at the D&D 3.5 Dungeon Masters Guide 2 , they have finally fleshed out Saltmarsh. Bizarrely, a town of less than four thousand people actually…

Bizarrely, a town of less than four thousand people actually has an assassins' guild, with roughly ten members. Do they take turns, each assassinating one person a year?

The charitable interpretation might be that, in addition to being responsible for assassinations in the town, the guild is also responsible for assassinations in the surrounding countryside; in medieval times the rural population significantly outnumbered the urban population. (Also, a world with Raise Dead might be able to sustain a greater rate of assassinations per capital per year...)

But yes, plausibility gets distorted in favour of playability.

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

#117

Post by jhbadger »

bserge wrote: post #106
rebuilder wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were times that the Romans auctioned off the right to tax a region. So you’d pay the state some sum and then have the right to extract whatever you can from the population. I’m sure the whole story is much more nuanced than that outline.

And I thought debt collection agencies are shit. We really do live in the best times so far.

Even 18th century pre-revolutionary France did this sort of thing. The great chemist Lavoisier was executed by revolutionaries, not because he was a chemist, but because he was also an administrator of the ferme générale, the privatized tax system of the time.

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

#118

Post by tshaddox »

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…

That could be a fun visual feature, to watch as paths and roads appear procedurally based on the layout of the town, but I don't think it's particular realistic, and might miss out on some strategic richness. Designing road networks is actually a complex and nuanced thing in and of itself, and it's certainly not as simple as "pave over the paths that people walk on the most." I think I would prefer road design to be a crucial part of the strategy in designing an efficient town.

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

#119

Post by cellis »

tomwojcik wrote: post #111
jonshariat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned so much from that game as a kid: Taxes, real estate values, city planning issues, money management, so many more

Pharaoh, Cleopatra, Zeus, Poseidon, Stronghold, Tzar: The burden of the crown, Theocracy, Settlers, SimCity, Cossacks, AoE2, HoMM3... There were many great city builders/strategy games back when we were kids :) and I owe them a lot as well. I'm glad we havent been raised in an era of battle royals.

Caesar III was one of my favorite games, but Aoe2 and Civ II ( both came out around the same time IIRC ) are the best strategy games of all time imo, followed closely by Civ 5 ( but I have no time for games anymore haha )

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

#120

Post by tigertigerbb »

Arnavion wrote: post #93
larsiusprime wrote: post #31

> And finally, something that would, in my opinion, really add to the realism and historical flavor of a medieval-themed city builder would be the introduction of mechanisms in which agricultural surpluses are skimmed by the church and the feudal lord. Tithes, taxes and rents! Instead of merely abstracting the taxes into an income modifier or letting the player be the extractor himself, we could be shown the tax coll…

I believe Pharaoh (mentioned in the previous paragraph) did actually have taxmen that would go out and collect taxes, and could be ambushed and killed by the people if they were sufficiently upset by the living conditions.

You should check out 'tax farming'. There's probably a wikipedia page for the 20,000 ft view.
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