Historical starting position: YES ! Rigid scripted historical process: NO !

[unmerged(17395)]

After Reading quite many partially narrow-minded claims for more historical accurate events I would like to set a contrast by suggesting that scripted events - if their outcome is determined - add linearity and predictability to a game and make it less replayable.

The historical setup (starting position; strength and capabilities of countries) and historical context (units, factories etc.) make Victoria authentic, credible - thus adding symbolic value where there is no 'country unknown 1' beating 'country unknown 2', but e.g. UK beating France with 80 cavalry units.
Unimaginative historians who claim for more accuracy of historical outcomes of the gameplay are more likely to enjoy historical movies and books than playing a strategy game where managing the (economic and military) strategy of a nation obviously means changing the history by the player.

3 Examples:
"Playing China you have to lose exactly 1 colonial war against France and 1 against the UK, and - in any case - make sure you do not win any of those wars - otherwise you'll never become civilized !"
I would far more enjoy playing China if those events were canned.

"The Netherlands, which usually only colonizes southeast Asia has gone nuts in Africa"
Great ! This demonstrates the variability of the AI engine and makes the game more replayable than if outcomes were fixed.

"Why was Mexico in the Spanish American war in the first place? If in real life they were ..."
So what ? Why shall an intelligent AI be restricted to historical happenings if it's capable of making its own decisions based on the situational gameplay ?

 

[unmerged(12680)]

Ah, this age old argument... I really don't have anything else to say except that I don't expect this to solved tonight.

 

[unmerged(14180)]

I agree with Anti.....this is a hard area to cover, with 2 distinct camps.

Thens theirs weirdos like me that enjoy a bit of both.

 

[unmerged(3921)]

Philosophically, scripted events are a crutch used to trigger sequences of events that the game and its AI would otherwise never be able to simulate. So ideally, if one had a game with AI able to simulate the complex interaction of geostrategic interests, one could have a game system that would dispense with scripted events entirely. However Victoria's AI is not yet able to do that. I don't really "blame" Paradox for that, in truth I really haven't seen any historically oriented game be able to faithfully replicate the complexity of issues/interests/aggression over a game time span that last nearly a century. But ideally that is what you'd want.

 

[unmerged(21992)]

Let me point out that obsession with historical accuracy has a few other associated costs:
1. A lot of time is spent on research instead of playtesting.
2. Historical accuracy is wasted on the 99% of the population that wants a game and not a simulator.
3. As at least a couple of the betas noted, demands for historical accuracy tend to snowball; the more you put in, the more people want.
4. Event-driven historical accuracy means that the player doesn't get an alternative way of playing out the event. Eg. if there WAS a treaty giving the US everything north of the Gadsen purchase, then the US player wouldn't be able to take more or less than that except by non-event mechanisms, which work better anyway.

 

[unmerged(16099)]

"Down with the events!!!!!"


"Long live the events!!!!"





--
EnPea

 

[unmerged(12680)]

4. Event-driven historical accuracy means that the player doesn't get an alternative way of playing out the event. Eg. if there WAS a treaty giving the US everything north of the Gadsen purchase, then the US player wouldn't be able to take more or less than that except by non-event mechanisms, which work better anyway.

I agree that I as a player could easily simply buy it. The problem is that the AI never ever buys any provinces or claims, so AI-only events or something might actually be needed to allow the US to ever reach the Pacific...

 

[Gwalcmai]

"Playing China you have to lose exactly 1 colonial war against France and 1 against the UK, and - in any case - make sure you do not win any of those wars - otherwise you'll never become civilized !"
I would far more enjoy playing China if those events were canned.

"The Netherlands, which usually only colonizes southeast Asia has gone nuts in Africa"
Great ! This demonstrates the variability of the AI engine and makes the game more replayable than if outcomes were fixed.

About the chinese situation, I agree. The conditions for turning civilised are currently too determined by real history. I still think China should remain a powerful "uncivilised" country in AI hands most of the times, but the current form of achieving civilised status by predetermined event only feels strange.

As for the dutch (and russian) colonising of Africa, I don't agree. It's not that they shouldn't be allowed to build colonies in Africa. It's just that the Netherlands and Russia divide Africa between them in every game, blocking out France and Britain. Because historically there were reasons for the process to be dominated by Britain and France, and their failure to do so in the game means something's wrong with the process in the game.

That's completely different from the demand that every province be colonised by their historical owner. The point is to change history, but when those changes are hitorically plausible it helps the feeling of "being the ruler".

 

[unmerged(3580)]

A good example is when Luxenburg breaks free from the Netherlands. I once owned all of Europe when the event happens, and then it doesn' really make sense anymore. If I control France and Germany for 10 years, I doubt Luxenburg is going to be the major revolter.

 

[Dinsdale]

2. Historical accuracy is wasted on the 99% of the population that wants a game and not a simulator.

You have definite numbers on the breakdown I see

4. Event-driven historical accuracy means that the player doesn't get an alternative way of playing out the event. Eg. if there WAS a treaty giving the US everything north of the Gadsen purchase, then the US player wouldn't be able to take more or less than that except by non-event mechanisms, which work better anyway.

No engine is ever going to cope with even 80 years and be able to accurately model the era, so events are a necessary evil. However, I do agree that too many events are a little crazed.

I gutted the EU2 events to prevent predeterminism from strangling every game, though I think Victoria has a better balance and number of earth-shattering events which don't make the game as predictable.

 

[unmerged(2567)]

In my opinion, the game architecture should tend toward history...like, most of the time in most places it resembles history. I think a 3/4 or so historical resemblance is fairly good.

But, as I recall from another post, a good argument can be made that some things in history just weren't guaranteed or very likely to actually have happened, and separating these from the rest is difficult.

What most of us, who think that a game of VIC should resemble history, want is just that whenever we turn around from building industry or dealing in little ventures in Latin America or SE Asia, that when we look at Europe we don't see Austrian provinces in France, or see a completely stunted Russia. Some things, like the early colonization of Africa, are historically indefensible, and represent a fault in the scenario or engine. (I'm inclined to think the former, actually. The engine is very good.)

I think that it's fantastic that the Dutch colonize Africa. The problem is, though, that usually if it is the Dutch it's only the Dutch, at the extreme exclusion of any other powers. Therein lies the point. I wouldn't mind the Dutch having Cote d'Ivoire and Nigeria if the Brits, French, and heaven forbid the Germans have a few of their own colors added to the continent.

 

[unmerged(16896)]

intelligent AI ?

That is an oxymoron. Although you probably meant it in a figurative manner rather than literal. Machines lack real intelligence thus they are merely artificial.

 

[unmerged(16896)]

Having alternate historical events might solve some of the problem a bit (not the predetermined part entirely though). Although predeterminism is indeed a problem you have to have at least some events to acomplish things that are normally impossible (like the possiblity of a huge territorial transfer or the forming of a new country like Germany).

The extremes of either side are probably not the best way to go. I do agree with vigour that excessive focus on predeterminism would remove the point of playing the game entirely. However some events need to actually be able to occur to get different things in the game. The U.S., Germany, Japan, and Canada are examples of countries with things that usually need events for certain conditions to have almost any probability of being the case.

 

[unmerged(17395)]

I have the feeling that paradox invests a remarkable amount of manpower into scripting (and patching) historical accurate events - I hope they're considering the potential of having the game modded and tweaked by hardcore users, as currently done by the VIP project.

Referring to HOI (Hearts of Iron) I'd be glad if Victoria-players had the choice between some kind of ...
- C.O.R.E. Mod (very historically authentic) ... and ...
- Stony Road Mod (focus on fun and gameplay, without historical boundaries)

Everyone was free to choose between those two contrary approaches.

 

[unmerged(5110)]

My opinion with regards to this debate is that i personally, am not fully in either camp.

I think that the best solution is to use the engine to give players the choices that their real-life had to make historically, i.e. make them face the same types of consequences so that the player can understand why the nation made the decision it did.

Of course, that's got to be a pretty darned good engine to do that, but I think it is possible. I think that for the historical accuracy people, at least, they would be OK with it being ahistorical, as long as it is plausibly ahistorical.

 

[Stefanos]

Yeah, what XieChengnuo said.

Give the player [and ai] the historical options, and let the ai make decisions based on historically accurate inputs, and let it go from there.

[and FWIW, my opinion is that the "Russian Africa" problem is a flaw elsewhere in the system]

 

[unmerged(21992)]

My opinion with regards to this debate is that i personally, am not fully in either camp.

I think that the best solution is to use the engine to give players the choices that their real-life had to make historically, i.e. make them face the same types of consequences so that the player can understand why the nation made the decision it did.

Of course, that's got to be a pretty darned good engine to do that, but I think it is possible. I think that for the historical accuracy people, at least, they would be OK with it being ahistorical, as long as it is plausibly ahistorical.

There's no practical difference between the historic camp and your position.

The historic camp already WANTS the player to have the same decisions as they did historically. If the player can do this via events for the major countries, the AI will get the same set of events with the same choices. Every event already includes instructions on how the AI should choose to resolve the event - with the same choice every time, or randomly.

The historic camp has never argued that the player should be straitjacketed. They've just argued for putting in as many historic events as Paradox can. But it's this same focus on historic events, used partially as a crutch and partially to mollify the historic camp, that is making the game indirectly less popular, by taking Paradox's focus away from those things that make games more popular.

 

[unmerged(5098)]

The idea is not to have the historical timeline scripted, but rather to let you experience some of the same challenges the real life nations did. As it is, you never see history to play out exactly like it did. But without events you would be able to play scot free without some of the problems, the USA would not have to fight the civil war, Britain would have a peaceful Ireland, Austria wouldn't have to worry about the emergin German and Italian.

It's a historical game. The idea is to put yourselves in the shoes of the leader one of the countries of this time and see if you can do any better.

 

[unmerged(4989)]

[Long Post]
I think ultimately, this issue boils down to did Paradox handle this issue correctly? I think they did. Let's look at my experiences with Paradox games:

EUII: LOTS of events; liked some, didn't like others. Changed those I didn't like.
HOI: Never got into, can't really comment, but seemed as if there were next to no events.
Vic: Sparse events, prob. more than HOI but a lot less than EUII. Personally, I'd like to see more, just to get more flavor of what happened in the world.

Point (it's comming, I swear): As many have said, there is many opinions out there. Even just myself in different games I have different opinions. But what did Paradox do with Vic? They stuck just enough events to make the major events of the period happen that normally wouldn't, then (from what I've seen) said, "community, do the rest if you want it. We won't officially add any more events via patch or otherwise."

This was ostensibly done for legal reasons. But there is a good strategy to this too. People who want to be straight-jacketed to history can download VIP or whatever and get those events. Those people who don't can still take the patches but not be forced to mod out events everytime.

Bottom line: Did Paradox handle this right? IMHO, Yes.
[/Long Post]

 

[unmerged(4989)]

Oh, and just to mention: To those of us that played EUI, remember life before events? It was still a fun game, but the main reason I salivated at the thought of EUII were the events; I nearly lost it when I saw the screenshot of the event firing for England to pick a faction for the English Civil War.