Taxation and Events...

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Johan K:
Hmmm... let me guess what the Proportions mod in your sig does. It desillyfies Space Empires without affecting the game play.

Actually, it desillifies SEIV, but has rather deep and profound effects on gameplay. Don't let him mod Dominions; he'll take the magic system out

[licker]

Originally posted by PvK:
There's a good example of how the anti-realism camp would rather have their game worlds be completely silly than use a reasonable unit of measurement, even when it has zero effect of gameplay.

PvK

Ahh yes, that's the entire point isn't it? The anti-realism camp (though that's a bit of a misnomer, but I'll stick with it for the sake of this discussion) doesn't give two #@$@s what the monatary unit is called. We (assuming I'm speaking for anyone besides me) also don't care what the names of the units are, or how 'accurately' modeled the weapon system is, or a variety of other things that, as you say, don't have a great (or any) impact on gameplay.

I like to think that we are simply more imaginative than the realism crowd, you know the guys who will spend a week debating the impact of a broad sword on a watermelon or whatever inanities they prefer

[PvK]

No, I think you are saying you don't care about realism, but actually you seem to be against realism, even when there is no gameplay or balance reason to be against realism.

The PvK Balance Mod for SEIV is the one that fixes the (empire design) game balance issues without complicating the game at all, simply by changing starting point costs.

Proportions Mod, as Saber Cherry says, turns gameplay on its head by half-correcting the proportions of many aspects of play. It turned out to be much more popular than I expected.

I actually think the Dominions games do an exceptionally good job of getting cause, effect, and even proportion pretty close to realistic or at least resembling the real-world (with magic, of course), which is a big part of why I like the games so much.

Gameplay and reasonable game balance are important to me too, but I find that there's rarely a need to make things totally unrealistic in the name of gameplay or balance. Unfortunately, there are those who mistakenly think that realism is incompatible by nature with gameplay or game balance, or who simply make zero effort to make game mechanics make any sense. Then you get games that pretend they are about a subject but get so much wrong that they'd be better if they just admitted they were about a completely imaginary situation where any similarity to the real universe is pure coincidence.

PvK

[licker]

Originally posted by PvK:
No, I think you are saying you don't care about realism, but actually you seem to be against realism, even when there is no gameplay or balance reason to be against realism.

The PvK Balance Mod for SEIV is the one that fixes the (empire design) game balance issues without complicating the game at all, simply by changing starting point costs.

Proportions Mod, as Saber Cherry says, turns gameplay on its head by half-correcting the proportions of many aspects of play. It turned out to be much more popular than I expected.

I actually think the Dominions games do an exceptionally good job of getting cause, effect, and even proportion pretty close to realistic or at least resembling the real-world (with magic, of course), which is a big part of why I like the games so much.

Gameplay and reasonable game balance are important to me too, but I find that there's rarely a need to make things totally unrealistic in the name of gameplay or balance. Unfortunately, there are those who mistakenly think that realism is incompatible by nature with gameplay or game balance, or who simply make zero effort to make game mechanics make any sense. Then you get games that pretend they are about a subject but get so much wrong that they'd be better if they just admitted they were about a completely imaginary situation where any similarity to the real universe is pure coincidence.

PvK

Woah, lets be careful what we assume here ok.

I never said I was against realism per se, I said I didn't care what the name of the monatary unit was, I didn't care how accurately modeled the combat system was. I did not say that I *wanted* more random and rediculose nonsense in the game (not that there is alot of it to begin with).

I will agree with this sentement though, when a game mechanic is wrong it needs to be fixed, and fixing it in a 'realistic' way is better than just 'making it work'. However, for those game elements which are just fluff (like the name of a monatary unit) it really doesn't make all that much difference *to me*. Why? Well becuase I can see the abstraction and accept it, I don't need to have every little detail put in perspective, or in the right place to work with the system as its provided.

I can't comment on your mod to SEIV as I've never used it, but I do know that it is well respected, and from that I assume that you have done a good job of making game mechanics or elements work in a better way, that you also followed a more 'realistic' formula is moot to me, if the game is more fun, more challenging, better in general, I don't care if you call phasors 'pink ray spewers' or torpedos 'jiggly puffs'.

But again, that's not really the point, the point is that trying to impose individual perceptions of reality into fantasy themed games is usually doomed to some sort of failure, as the game mechanics wind up being so incredibly complex that the enjoyment of the game is lost. Now I'm not saying that changing pounds of gold to gold coins will ruin anything, what I am saying is that as soon as you get too worked up about the 'reality' in the game you start down a very slippery slope where you are moddleing supply, upkeep, weapon reach, moral, in more complex ways than is needed to keep the game entertaining. Well to each their own, whats fun for one isn't fun for another, I recognize that, but pissing over the little things surely isn't worth the time when there are bigger things to fix.

Besides my 's apparently went unheaded in my first post

[PvK]

licker, I hope I didn't sound like I was ranting against you. I was just trying to be clear. I had a in my previous post too, indicating I was just teasing.

Then I was trying to explain the ideas behind the tease. I think there are extremists and people who lose sight of gameplay and balance in both camps, and both sides tend to misunderstand each other a bit.

PvK

[licker]

Originally posted by PvK:
licker, I hope I didn't sound like I was ranting against you. I was just trying to be clear. I had a in my previous post too, indicating I was just teasing.

Then I was trying to explain the ideas behind the tease. I think there are extremists and people who lose sight of gameplay and balance in both camps, and both sides tend to misunderstand each other a bit.

PvK

No, I didn't take it personally, I just like the challenge of debating the merits of realism in fantasy based games. Believe me, we are closer to the same opinion than it appears from the Posts in this thread.

The extremeists are annoying from both sides, I like as much realism as is applicable, but I'm also more than happy to accept certain abstractions in the name of game play. I used to love playing board games like Squad Leader and 3rd Reich, until the group that I played with became such rules nazis that it was no longer entertaining to play with them. Not to imply that I wanted to bend the rules, let alone break them, but when more time was spent on the rules than the game... well you know what I mean. I moved back to playing Risk and Axis and Allies, not as much thought involved, but the games were more satisfing since it was no longer about how you interpret some poorly worded paragraph on attrition.


Dom1 and 2 seem to have the right amount of attention to detail without being overbearing. There is room for some improvement I suppose, but its minor, and not so much about making things more realistic, but rather about making game mechanics more balanced. The whole spiel about LI is an example of that. There are several ways to give them a place in the game, but the simplest way is probably the best, otherwise we wind up with changes to the tactical combat model which may or may not be a good thing.

I'm always a proponent of starting with the simple structures, because they are easier to implement, and easier to understand. Once they are in place, and more or less balanced, you can begin to tweek them or add to them to get to the complexity and balance level you want to attain. Your earlier comment about some games trying to be more than they are capeable of is very true, and I want to avoid that line of thinking for Dom as much as possible. Not to say that I don't have faith in the devs to get things right, just that when you start with the complex its orders of magnatude more difficult to get it right the first time

[Edi]

Didn't mean to imply that this is like a life and death issue or anything, the word pound just jumped at me when I read the event list. It really doesn't matter for gameplay purposes, but just seeing it there made me think about it and caused a reaction of major "WTF?!".

I'm not really a harcore realism advocate or anything, I can quite easily rationalize things that don't have much impact and am all fine with abstractions, but sometimes details like this just jump out at me, because I've dabbled with writing fantasy, and the amounts we're talking about here would turn any regular fantasy world upside down.

If I wanted to use an imperial measurement system weight unit for denoting amounts of gold, I'd use the ounce, that'd be 28 grams instead of 450 and change, but if IW wants to keep the pound, that's no skin off my back and won't reduce my enjoyment of the game. I'll still be going "WTF?" and shaking my head at it, but its real net effect is absolutely nil.

I just wanted to point out a humorous little detail, was all.

As for the discussion you've had, licker and PvK, I agree with practically all the points you bring up.

Edi