Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

leidenmedievalistsblog.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 246 posts

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

#141

Post by shakezula »

gspr wrote: post #90
shakezula wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense that they also developed Stellaris. Looks like I have a new game to buy and play.

Consider yourself warned: all Paradox games are highly addictive drugs. What you must have experienced with Stellaris is representative of most their games. EU IV is indeed a good choice if you liked Stellaris (I usually explain Stellaris to people as EU in spaaaaace).

God, don't I know it. Between Crusader Kings and Stellaris I've burned a good-sized hole in my time budget haha. Great games, though. Stellaris' political modeling is one of my favorites in any sim game.

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

#142

Post by dntrkv »

dragontamer wrote: post #43
mcjoken wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But you choose the trade routes individually. Its not natural, that's the player's choice in where the roads go (except for Rome: all roads lead to Rome lol (special power where every city auto-builds a road to Rome in the early ages))

It's not completely manual. If you have cities A, B, and C and you have an existing route from city B to C, and you add one from A to C, it will automatically choose the optimal route by utilizing existing roads and connect the new city from there.

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

#143

Post by MaxLeiter »

Not directly related to the article, but it mentions one of my favorite games, Banished. The entire game, from the engine to the models to the music, was created by one developer. The dev log is no longer online, but I recommend scrolling through it on the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20201208071123/http://shiningroc...

(the posts in 2013-2015 are Banished related)

It's a great resource for anyone interested in game design, game development, or the fields involved in both (which is most).

Here's one of my more recent personal favorites: https://web.archive.org/web/20201208071205/https://www.shini...

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

#144

Post by learc83 »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #137
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…

My historical accuracy may be lacking here, but IIRC weren't "tax rates" in roman and subsequent medieval times relatively light as a percentage of one's wages? Specifically in Mideval england, the taxes were mostly on land, which the majority of the population would have had to pay, since most weren't land owners. I mean obviously taking a dollar when you only make 100 a year will feel disastrous, but I mean, it's n…

>subsequent medieval times relatively light as a percentage of one's wages?

You owed the lord a percentage of what you produced as rent. You owed the church a tithe. You also potentially owed service to the lord and the church. Taxes were also paid on certain goods purchased. Taxes that in many cases nobles were exempt from. Kings and feudal lords could also enact special taxes to pay for specific projects.

If you were a merchant of some kind and you wanted to float your barge down a river, you had to pay nearly every town you passed through.

>it's nothing compared to what we experience today in the developed world.

Your overall tax burden could still be tremendous even if it's not paid to 1 central taxing authority.

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

#145

Post by Davidbrcz »

ajuc wrote: post #132
lovecg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under no circumstances you should get Crusader Kings 3. If you value your time at all that is.

I was kinda disappointed in it. Crusader Kings 2 were much better.

Ck2 was released roughly 10 years ago amd had tons of extensions.

I played recently ck3 and, even if the vanilla gamw is better than ck2, i got the same dull - boredom after 20 hours than i had when i played vanilla ck2 for thr first time. Give it some time :~)

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

#146

Post by larsiusprime »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #137
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…

My historical accuracy may be lacking here, but IIRC weren't "tax rates" in roman and subsequent medieval times relatively light as a percentage of one's wages? Specifically in Mideval england, the taxes were mostly on land, which the majority of the population would have had to pay, since most weren't land owners. I mean obviously taking a dollar when you only make 100 a year will feel disastrous, but I mean, it's n…

Some bits on roman taxation: https://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php

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

#147

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

This assumes the differences are purposefully designed rather than out of ignorance of the past. I think you can create a unique game by looking at the historical time periods these games were made about and going from there. This is because most of these games actually start with something like DnD and go from there.

As a simple example of where this can lead you into historical inaccuricies... the long sword. Long swords are two handed swords. It's not a hill I'm gonna die on but the reason why people think long swords are 1 handed is completely because of DnD and everyone copying them.

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

#148

Post by mrVentures2 »

larsiusprime wrote: post #45
mrVentures2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See the the Caesar franchise (Caesar IV, 2006). You have to hire tax collectors, set taxes, and yes you also have a separate income as a governor. It does all of this.

That's cool! Does it say what exactly you are taxing (labor, land, capital, income, wealth)?, or is that left abstract?

You said taxes for the different markets (such as luxury goods, Granary, and imports) all of the citizen shop at, and then you set separate real estate taxes for the patricians which are the wealthiest class in the society. And you can see the little dude walk around and get the taxes. The game really holds up, it's my fav =)

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

#149

Post by throw0101a »

ajuc wrote: post #132
lovecg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under no circumstances you should get Crusader Kings 3. If you value your time at all that is.

I was kinda disappointed in it. Crusader Kings 2 were much better.

I once heard someone remark that for CK3 it is better dial back the grand strategy component and dial up the role playing aspect. Not to try to optimize an awesome long-term winning strategy, but to make choices with each ruler along their personality traits.

This may cause you to crash and burn with your kingdom, but it's probably more akin to how humans (and rulers) actually operated.

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

#150

Post by Robotbeat »

learc83 wrote: post #144
dimitrios1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My historical accuracy may be lacking here, but IIRC weren't "tax rates" in roman and subsequent medieval times relatively light as a percentage of one's wages? Specifically in Mideval england, the taxes were mostly on land, which the majority of the population would have had to pay, since most weren't land owners. I mean obviously taking a dollar when you only make 100 a year will feel disastrous, but I mean, it's n…

>subsequent medieval times relatively light as a percentage of one's wages? You owed the lord a percentage of what you produced as rent. You owed the church a tithe. You also potentially owed service to the lord and the church. Taxes were also paid on certain goods purchased. Taxes that in many cases nobles were exempt from. Kings and feudal lords could also enact special taxes to pay for specific projects. If you we…

Yeah, and from what I understand, it was a tax on revenue, not profit. If you harvested 10 carrots and had to give 3 or 8 carrots to your horses, you were still tithed 1 carrot.
Post reply on HN