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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

#191

Post by nearbuy »

Brendinooo wrote: post #163
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 always figured that game makers didn't do this because it wouldn't actually be fun to play with. Reminds me of when I played Medieval: Total War and spent most of my time dealing with uprisings. Like, do we want to deal with regulation bloat that causes greater infrastructure costs, so you have to pay billions to build a big road or whatever? Can you account for a Whiskey Rebellion sort of scenario in a SimCity sor…

Kerbal Space Program is one of the most popular paid games on Steam, far ahead of every arcadey Galaga-like game on Steam.

I agree with your point though. Kerbal Space Program, like all games, also sacrifices realism for fun in places. Like how you can send astronauts on multi-year voyages without any concerns about food, water, life support, radiation shielding, etc.

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

#192

Post by rodgerd »

Rd6n6 wrote: post #21

I’m actually beginning some informal research on 17th century Europe for a small game right now. There are some village life and village builder aspects. It’s the beginning of the “modern” period and just after the renaissance. What is life like for the local business owner? Who would they be? What extent is it still feudal serfdom in during ? It’s an interesting time with massive social, scientific, and religious ch…

Elizabeth Norton's Lives of Tudor Women overlaps somewhat with the period that you're interested in.

History of Private Life, edited by Aries and Duby - volumes 2 and 3 cover the medieval and renaissance period.

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

#193

Post by CydeWeys »

nearbuy wrote: post #191
Brendinooo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always figured that game makers didn't do this because it wouldn't actually be fun to play with. Reminds me of when I played Medieval: Total War and spent most of my time dealing with uprisings. Like, do we want to deal with regulation bloat that causes greater infrastructure costs, so you have to pay billions to build a big road or whatever? Can you account for a Whiskey Rebellion sort of scenario in a SimCity sor…

Kerbal Space Program is one of the most popular paid games on Steam, far ahead of every arcadey Galaga-like game on Steam. I agree with your point though. Kerbal Space Program, like all games, also sacrifices realism for fun in places. Like how you can send astronauts on multi-year voyages without any concerns about food, water, life support, radiation shielding, etc.

There are mods that add support for those things, but most people don't use them.

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

#194

Post by rodgerd »

mastax wrote: post #62
a4isms wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When creating an entertainment product, be it a movie or game, your user’s expectations are the canvas you paint on. In some places you deliberately violate them, in others you accommodate them at the expense of “realism.” An amusing example: In the Sly Stallone rock climbing action movie “Cliffhanger,” they shot a scene where he ice climbs without an axe. To get past a certain section, he dips his gloved hand in col…

This is very evident in historical media where medieval people are portrayed as wearing burlap sacks and misshapen clumps of fur inside plain brown plaster castles rather than wearing brocade, silks, or brightly died wool inside colorfully-painted palaces or churches. To some extent you have to meet the audience where they are.

The European world-view on what constitutes fine aesthetic sense is derived from Renaissance mis-interpretation of Greek decoration as being white marble. The colours that our culture subsequently rejects as gaudy, tasteless, and are othered are based on this.

In reality it turns out that the Greeks painted everything batshit colours and Ancient Athens probably looked more like an 80s day-glo MTV video.

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

#195

Post by TeMPOraL »

mttyng wrote: post #109
gspr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Personally, I prefer Aurora and Distant Worlds: Universe. Paradox games are fantastic but these are Dwarf Fortress-level detail (if you’re into that sort of thing).

> I prefer Aurora

Is this that VB game that got eventually rebooted(?) in C#, that's full of annoying little glitches[0] that would be trivial to fix if the author wasn't aggressively against any and all kinds of modding?

I'm definitely looking for a 4X equivalent of Dwarf Fortress. Stellaris ain't it - I like it, but it gets too repetitive after first longer game, because the mechanics is just rock-paper-scissors with a hundred thousand numerical modifiers that have little qualitative impact on gameplay.

--

Like some number handling within the game being locale-dependent, so that unless you set your system locale to en_GB, it might behave unpredictably.

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

#196

Post by TeMPOraL »

semperdark wrote: post #121
mmcdermott wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been meaning to revisit Paradox games for a minute. Crusader Kings II hooked me the most. I never really delved into EU. The big problem I had with Stellaris is that I usually lose interest in the mid-game. I love the exploration, the building and even the initial diplomacy, but I just lose interest when everything levels out. I understand from AARs and the like that there are late game effects to disrupt the st…

You should adjust the "mid-game start year" and "late-game start year" sliders at game setup. Note that those are just the earliest possible start times, and the chance starts rolling yearly. Definitely frustrating that you have to try to predict the game trajectory in advance. A game going well is almost a bad thing - you end up ahead of the curve and sit around doing nothing.

I personally find there's no depth to it: the winning strategy is to focus on growing your economic base and pump all spare capacity into research - by mid-game, you'll out-earn and out-tech every opponent other than the fallen empires.

In my last long playthrough, the second half of the game was literally me just racing against the victory condition clock to see how much megastructures I can cram in, so I can see what they do in a single game. It got briefly interesting for a moment, when a fallen empire decided to start their crusade at my doorstep - I had to engage in some micro-heavy delaying action for some of in-game years, until my exponential trajectory made me out-tech them and I could get back to building megastructures.

I mean, I like the game - but I wish there was some more meaning attached to things, for the actions to be more complex than scaling some numerical modifiers, for the tech tree to not be a tree and not be shared, for battles to be something more than "weapons are rock-paper-scissors, whoever brings more total points into the fight wins"...

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

#197

Post by omegaham »

CydeWeys wrote: post #193
nearbuy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kerbal Space Program is one of the most popular paid games on Steam, far ahead of every arcadey Galaga-like game on Steam. I agree with your point though. Kerbal Space Program, like all games, also sacrifices realism for fun in places. Like how you can send astronauts on multi-year voyages without any concerns about food, water, life support, radiation shielding, etc.

There are mods that add support for those things, but most people don't use them.

Similarly, you can play on difficulty settings that forbid reverts, but most people just want to build rockets and try again if they fail rather than meticulously engineer every aspect of the mission.

I joke that the Revert button is the "never mind, that was a simulation. The next one is the actual mission" button.

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

#198

Post by samstave »

Brendinooo wrote: post #163
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 always figured that game makers didn't do this because it wouldn't actually be fun to play with. Reminds me of when I played Medieval: Total War and spent most of my time dealing with uprisings. Like, do we want to deal with regulation bloat that causes greater infrastructure costs, so you have to pay billions to build a big road or whatever? Can you account for a Whiskey Rebellion sort of scenario in a SimCity sor…

I recall back in the early 90s my buddy (who is now an EVP of games dev at blizzard) - was asking me why I didn't like playing masters of Orion- I told him "it's no fun to play a spreadsheet"

---

Then I read this interesting article about a guy in SF several years ago and he was the key accountant, strategist for (whatever that massive space battle game is that was hyper popular with the russians) - and he didn't even play the actual game! All he did was manage the massive assets of their guild faction with excel and other tools and they were making hundreds of thousands in real dollars per year and that was his actual IRL full time job.

The one where they had that massive battle and thousand and thousand of real money was lost on the eradication of huge digital fleets...

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

#199

Post by samstave »

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…

I found road building fun in KaM

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

#200

Post by bargle0 »

samstave wrote: post #198
Brendinooo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always figured that game makers didn't do this because it wouldn't actually be fun to play with. Reminds me of when I played Medieval: Total War and spent most of my time dealing with uprisings. Like, do we want to deal with regulation bloat that causes greater infrastructure costs, so you have to pay billions to build a big road or whatever? Can you account for a Whiskey Rebellion sort of scenario in a SimCity sor…

I recall back in the early 90s my buddy (who is now an EVP of games dev at blizzard) - was asking me why I didn't like playing masters of Orion- I told him "it's no fun to play a spreadsheet" --- Then I read this interesting article about a guy in SF several years ago and he was the key accountant, strategist for (whatever that massive space battle game is that was hyper popular with the russians) - and he didn't eve…

Eve Online, probably.
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