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

231–240 of 246 posts

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

#231

Post by semperdark »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #230
semperdark wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, it's been a long while since I booted up Stellaris. Something like Starnet and absurdly hard cling-to-life difficulties brings a little spice, but it's pretty much a solved game of tuning resource flows. On launch they made a big deal about how they had the "cards" instead of a tech tree... turns out that's pretty much just a tech tree.

I don't feel like cards would be better :). I want the opposite - a kind of tech graph that's too large for any single player/NPC to explore thoroughly in a single playthrough, allowing a greater variety of opponents and games. I'd like different parts of the tree to offer different advantages, enabling different play styles. Stellaris tries to enable variety by using "cards" to prevent you from seeing the entire tec…

Exactly what I mean - the cards end up just being a tech tree in practice. The PDX games really do just need more _content_.

Haha - If you ever end up writing that game, send me a beta invite!

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

#232

Post by tompazourek »

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…

In "Cities: Skylines" you work with taxes and land use. It sure would be cool if there was a medieval version of it.

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

#233

Post by mcv »

blunte wrote: post #103

The point is not to be historically accurate. Ideally you strike a good balance of fun, challenging, and historically accurate - in that order. I can't speak for the games listed, but for the one AAA game I had the opportunity to work, "but is it fun?" was a question we would ask ourselves periodically. The natural tendency was to strive for correctness and simulation level accuracy. But that's usually very much not…

What different people consider fun varies a lot though. There's no universal standard of fun.

Take Paradox games like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings. They go to quite a bit of trouble to approach historical accuracy (there are still a lot of abstractions of course, but they do a far better job than the Civilizations and the Total Wars). A lot of people love them exactly for that reason. For those people, historical accuracy itself is fun. For other people, these games are probably horrible and tedious.

People have different tastes. I certainly would love a more historically accurate city builder. I lost interest in the fake base-building standard a long time ago.

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

#234

Post by spiralx »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #147
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…

Ars Magica the RPG was set in a low-fantasy version of Europe, you had three different characters you could play during a story - a magus of the Order of Hermes, a companion of the mage's covenant (knights, scholars, churchmen and other important people), and one of the "grogs" who lived and worked at or around the covenant - peasants, maids, men at arms and thieves. It certainly wasn't an accurate depiction of the Middle Ages, but it came a lot closer in trying to make the setting more historical, and on top of that make it so that being more historical was an integral part of the game.

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

#235

Post by mcv »

sprafa wrote: post #167
mncharity wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the products of a culture with less tolerance for untruth than our own. It might see more films with postscript reality checks, like Jackie Chan's making-of "if you do this, you will get hurt". More children's picture books with errata pages, like Penny Chisholm's. I wonder if some such might be encouraged somehow?

Why would you want such a culture? People love movies and probably can learn how untrue or true they are by just googling stuff. I certainly do.

"Want" or "is good" are two different things. We're living in a culture where a lot of people clearly love believing all sorts of untruths, and don't care much for the real truth. Is that good? I think not.

Of course movies are for the most part relatively harmless entertainment, but they too do shape expectations. I've heard of Juries rejecting reasonable evidence because crime shows have taught them to expect iron clad proof.

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

#236

Post by mcv »

sprafa wrote: post #78
Aerroon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sword fights certainly could seem more realistic without losing the excitement. Check this out ('fighting' starts at around 2 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GoQlvc_H3s

This is great but virtually all of this is similar to what I know about the samurai - most fighting with a sword ends VERY quickly with someone getting stabbed. We are talking about an encounter between two men being decided in a few swordstrokes. Seconds, not minutes. There is not much room for 3-5-10 minute fights and acrobatics. Yes it’s interesting as a YouTube video, but for filmmaking suspense comes from “dilat…

One movie that struck me as having probably more realistic gun fights than most (though I wouldn't know, having fortunately no experience with gun fights) is Children of Man. People are doing something. Suddenly someone collapses, you hear gun shots, they look for cover, and still you have no idea where the gun shots are coming from. Much more exciting and terrifying than the usual Hollywood gun fight.

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

#237

Post by rytor718 »

datameta wrote: post #169
tomwojcik wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mmm, Stronghold. Tax and ration tiers were an interesting mechanic for morale management. That game also had perhaps the most intricate siege simulation I've seen (ignoring the fact that many historical sieges had attrition as the goal). Had quite the large community of map and castle makers.

Yeah Ive come to learn that Stronghold is something of a semi-hidden gem that only really gained the popularity it deserved a good decade or more after its inception (I wager due to Steam and the efforts to renew its name). This game felt the most medieval to me when I first got it, not that I knew what realistic medieval settlements were like :)

Its the only settler game I've played where I enjoyed the siege warfare at all.

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

#238

Post by blunte »

mcv wrote: post #233
blunte wrote: post #103

The point is not to be historically accurate. Ideally you strike a good balance of fun, challenging, and historically accurate - in that order. I can't speak for the games listed, but for the one AAA game I had the opportunity to work, "but is it fun?" was a question we would ask ourselves periodically. The natural tendency was to strive for correctness and simulation level accuracy. But that's usually very much not…

What different people consider fun varies a lot though. There's no universal standard of fun. Take Paradox games like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings. They go to quite a bit of trouble to approach historical accuracy (there are still a lot of abstractions of course, but they do a far better job than the Civilizations and the Total Wars). A lot of people love them exactly for that reason. For those people, histo…

Indeed this is all very true, but if you have a big publisher, “fun” is usually focused on a large target audience.

That’s why it’s so great that we have good tooling nowadays which allows indie developers to aim for the niche that they like.

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

#239

Post by sershe »

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…

Shadow Empire I think tries to model that, but I cannot tell if it's really bare-bones or if it just isn't surfaced enough so it looks too simplistic and you rarely interact with it, other than using political power to boost private economy, or raise public workers' salary to match private salaries. Or maybe I'm a beginner player so I don't "see" it yet.

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

#240

Post by fho »

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.

I still remember Tzar fondly for it's in game cut scenes. Also, it's one of those games where assassins could could climb walls so even completely turtled up you couldn't be 100% sure that you are safe.
Post reply on HN