17 ms·

The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

459 points by jsnell 5y ago

dec0dedab0de 5y ago
The city builder has its origins far back in the 1990s in the combination of the strategy genre and the management genre, leading to games such as Sim City (1989), Caesar (1992) and Age of Empires (1997). Utopia for Intellivision/Aquarius came out in 1982. It was one of my favorite games growing up. I highly recommend it if you're into these kinds of games, or retro gaming. I guess I was retro gaming when I played it in the late 80s/early 90s, but we didn't call it that then. Some caveats, It's a 2 player game, you need to read the instructions, and it's annoying without the overlays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(video_game) edit: When Sim City, and Populous made their way to Super Nintendo, I remember explaining to my older cousin that they were kind of like Utopia.
- svachalek 5y ago
  Interesting. We actually had an Intellivision back in the day, but not this game. I think I would have loved it.
  - xbar 5y ago
    I still play this game against my brother-in-law when I visit for the holidays. He's gotten really good, and I haven't played it consistently since 1984.
sprafa 5y ago
It’s interesting and most likely not applicable - for the very same reasons you cant get realistic sword fighting (or even street fighting) in most Hollywood movies: realistic fighting doesn’t look as exciting as the fake thing. Glad the author sees into that very clearly. * Could be an interesting art game tho as someone pointed out below
- cryptoz 5y ago
  There's a really great scene in HBO's Barry (Bill Hader) with an attempt at a more realistic fight scene. It's quite interesting actually! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MjQRqEk5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MjQRqEk5M Spoilers possible if you haven't seen the show. Definitely recommend it btw.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    Wow, that was very entertaining though obviously a bit comedic. Both characters also seem to have much better technique than conditioning.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The same episode, hilariously, includes one of their least realistic fight scenes. Wild ride.
  - sprafa 5y ago
    If you watch MMA you would know that this fight would be over around the 1 minute mark. The impression of realism you get here is not real realism - just a way to simulate it, still holding onto the tropes of the genre and the “time dilation” necessary for suspense in filmmaking. Real street fights don’t last long, and fights between trained fighters are even shorter. one sucker punch or one good chokehold is all it takes.
- 0xdada 5y ago
  > Medieval villagers were often living on the edge of subsistence. Agricultural surpluses were skimmed by the church and the feudal lords. Bad harvests, banditry, warfare and disease might decimate a village community at any time. Dwarf Fortress has shown that this would in fact be quite exciting, but it would probably be a lot more niche.
  - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    > but it would probably be a lot more niche Dwarf Fortress also proving that if you hit the correct niche that your game can get a huge following if you're scratching an itch people never knew they had.
publicola1990 5y ago
Even modern city builders are inaccurate in the sense that timelines of how long it takes to build things aren't Modelled correct. Plus organic city growth is rarely simulated. Cities skylines for example has no concept of slums. Also the annoying Western/Eurocentrism. Eg: See the recent game Dorfromantik, its aesthetically pleasing, it is rustic european scenery, but why isn't it not set in Indonesia or Ecuador or Uzbekistan?
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  > Eg: See the recent game Dorfromantik, its aesthetically pleasing, its rustic european scene, but why isn't it not set in Indonesia or Ecuador or Uzbekistan? That seems a bit harsh judgement for a game with a German name, made by 4 German game design students living in Berlin, with funds from the German state [0]. [0] https://toukana.itch.io/ https://toukana.itch.io/
  - Derek_Mudaxe 5y ago
    Yeah, if a European developer attempted to make a non-European city builder then they'd probably get accused of appropriation, and in addition would also get slammed for the inaccuracies and socio-cultural misunderstandings that would inevitably manifest. Also, what stops developers in those aforementioned regions making their own games, there are plenty of relatively cheap and reasonable options in terms of game engines.
  - vagrantJin 5y ago
    You make an excellent point.
- grawprog 5y ago
  >Cities skylines for example has no concept of slums. That was one thing it seemed to simulate pretty well in my experience. Last time I played it, I set up the city with a bunch of low income housing areas in industrial zones, roads all through them, small housing plots next to industry and under overpasses and stuff. The neighbourhoods looked exactly like the low income housing neighbourhoods around industrial areas I've seen in real life. The people in those houses were typically unhealthier than in other areas. I put the closest hospitals and schools just outside those areas, the waste water from the city was dumped nearby etc. It's quite possible to create extremely disparate neighborhoods and areas. From slums to McMansion filled suburbs to bustling industrial areas. Sadly though, my in game city started with me trying to model my real city. It turned out pretty accurate at least as far as neighbourhood layout and visual income disparity went.
littlecranky67 5y ago
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 shops walking to it (also depending on terrain and usage of i.e. horse carriages).
- mpfundstein 5y ago
  The settlers.did this AFAIK
  - skitter 5y ago
    Specifically Settlers 3 & 4. In 1, 2, 6 and I believe 7, paths are build manually; 5 doesn't have roads.
  - FooHentai 5y ago
    I recall in settlers 2 you put down the initial walkway, but it widening into a 2-way path and eventually a carriageway that donkeys would traverse was down to how much traffic it saw.
  - sedatk 5y ago
    Back in the 90's, just to set the record straight. It was probably the first game that did it.
- paavohtl 5y ago
  This is exactly what Foundation [1] (which was also shown in a screenshot in the article) does. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/
  - Aperocky 5y ago
    Looks like it's windows only..
pphysch 5y ago
The basic problem is the disparity in control mechanisms. As a city-builder player, you have central planning capabilities that would make Stalin jealous--and were completely unattainable in the relevant time period due to poor communications technology. One solution is to make "social power"/"control"/"influence" an actual gameplay mechanic, rather than leaving it entirely to the players cognition/dexterity. Lack of player control is counterbalanced by powerful AI. For example, at the start of the game you might play as a local authority that manages land rights. You merely specify who owns what land and have limited control over how they use it. Eventually, the peasants build organic settlements, and if they get big enough, you can get transferred there and act as mayor--with the ability to set more precise local policy and therefore begin to shape the town... And so on and so forth.
- svachalek 5y ago
  According to TFA however, one flaw in medieval city builders is that they are too organic, when actual villages were centrally planned. The more major one however is that growth was apparently near hopeless, which would really make them play like a different genre entirely.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I think with modern hindsight, growth would be fairly straightforward, but it’s anachronistic to bring 21st century intellectual tools to bear in a 10th Century context, like bringing a machine gun (and plenty of ammo) to a medieval battlefield. Even things like knowing about sanitation (so don’t put wells where you dump your sewer) would help massively.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Villages are planned to some extent, but they almost certainly are placed in areas with existing settlers i.e. productive capacity. The farms (settlers) come first, then the village follows.
slingnow 5y ago
This just in: video game discovered that doesn't completely adhere to <history / physics / reality / etc>. More at 11.
- Macha 5y ago
  This is a case of HN's clickbait prevention hurting the title. The original title is "Why Medieval city builder video games are historically inaccurate" and considers some of the details rarely represented. However to stop titles like "Why are 9/10 moms using XYZ?" that are badly disguised ads, HN strips opening questions from titles.
jonbaer 5y ago
This is probably one of the better reasons why I like 0AD [1] more than anything (besides being open sourced [2]). If you read the forums and traverse the amazing artwork it's like a history lesson and there was no 0AD so they can mix/match. [1] - https://play0ad.com/ https://play0ad.com/ [2] - https://github.com/0ad/0ad https://github.com/0ad/0ad
duxup 5y ago
I always thought city builders are a weird mix of sort of free market / authoritarian beliefs: In most city builder games involve some planning, incentives provided, and people just show up, do their thing, growth is endless, build a business, and there you go. On the other hand in most city builders the player makes all the decisions and can act at will with no regard to his local citizens ;)
- drewzero1 5y ago
  Can you imagine a real mayor simulator, where you'd have to get elected and answer to the city council and constituents? I expect most would find that boring, but it might be a fun (or at least educational) experience for some.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Hearts of Iron (3 in particular) One of the biggest problems with playing as the USA in Hearts of Iron is that you need to actually convince your Democracy / citizens that its worthwhile to go to war. And unless you click the "Crisis of Democracy" button (aka: turn yourself into a dictatorship), you don't actually have full control over the policies of your country. Which is why its more fun to play as Germany / Hitler (where the button was already pressed before the game started). But playing as the USA (where you have to build support and convert the peacetime economy into a military economy in time for the war) is a big challenge... a "hard mode" for those who have already mastered the military portions of the game.
    - DaedPsyker 5y ago
      I think HOI problem (more familiar with 4) is that it feels much more half baked. US Congress is mostly click a few event popups, click a few policy stuff in a menu and see the congress members just flip. It's more shoehorning it into the HOI system. I think you could make the process fun, but in paradox style games where you need to generalise a system to fit everywhere in the world, it can fall flat.
      - 5y ago
1123581321 5y ago
Good article. The difficulty with simulating these plots and new settlements is that the player’s interests aren’t the same as any individual freeman’s. Letting the player map out fields could certainly be done, but it wouldn’t meaningfully change the game as conventional city-builder players of any skill also have a layout in mind before they begin the game. Players also value a high quantity of content and replayability, again at odds with the interest of a medieval freeman, churchman or lord who preferred consistency to novelty for the reasons mentioned in the preface.
Rd6n6 5y ago
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 <country> during <year>? It’s an interesting time with massive social, scientific, and religious change, it’s been really fun to read about so far Edit: if anybody has books or articles to recommend, I’d love to hear about them
- mastax 5y ago
  ACoUP is incredible, though not specific to that time period: https://acoup.blog/resources-for-world-builders/ https://acoup.blog/resources-for-world-builders/
  - veddox 5y ago
    I was waiting for ACOUP to pop up in this thread - surprised it took so long :D
- Retric 5y ago
  17th century Europe was quite modern with for example long distance power transmission. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmi... The spinning wheel similarly had already transformed transformed the making of cloth and rope. By the 1700’s cottage industries where setup to leverage the free time of village workers on an industrial scale. Communities would specialize based on local resources including transportation networks. Also, rivers where the medieval equivalent of highways and railroads. A 500 mile journey by waterways was generally cheaper than a 50 mile trip by land.
  - shezi 5y ago
    According to AcoUP, transport cost over land is five times that over rivers, and twenty times that over sea. https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-cities-have-curves/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-c...
hyperion2010 5y ago
Figuring out how to take these realities and tweak the gameplay cycle to make it "fun" seems like a fantastic design challenge. I wonder what the author would think of Dwarf Fortress forts that have been played on the surface.
- mLuby 5y ago
  I played a group of dwarves who, instead of burrowing into the mountain, deforested their land to make a town of wooden buildings on the surface (complete with archer towers, drawbridge, and moat). Naturally, the neighboring elves weren't too pleased with all the tree felling and eventually wiped the dwarves out.
dragontamer 5y ago
City builders, such as Sim City or even City Skylines are all inaccurate to various degrees. I find it more "honest" when Tropico 6 makes fun of the concept entirely: with your hackers stealing the White House from the US Government. Strangely enough, I find Tropico to be a more believable setting. * Citizen simulation: Citizens need to travel between different areas. Miners need to enter the mines, but when they get tired, they need to travel home to rest. Every now and then, they must travel to Church to fulfil their personal religious needs (religious citizens need more church than non-religious). Etc. etc. for all the personal needs of citizens (food, housing, religion, entertainment). Citizens also grow up: adults give birth to children, children go to school (or not: if you don't have schools they'll grow up uneducated), 20 years later they enter the workforce as either "uneducated", "high school" educated, or "college educated". Higher education levels can perform more jobs (ex: Petro-chemical engineer), while uneducated are forced into the lowest wage jobs (farming or mining). You do need farmers and miners however. So you kind of need to balance the number of high and low educated fellows in your island. * The economy: Tropico simulates a small island country in a world of "Superpowers". Tropico 6 has 4 ages and therefore different sets of superpowers. Early ages is "The Crown" (the sole superpower), your hypothetical king who sent you to colonize the island. Then comes "Axis" and "Allies" as the two superpowers. A few decades later you get USSR vs USA. Finally the superpowers split into the modern age (Europe, USA, Russia, China). * You're a small fish in the world. Your entire economy consists of satisfying the superpowers with goods. More advanced goods means more money from a superpower. Too much relations with one superpower (ex: USA) will piss off rival superpowers (ex: USSR in Cold War era). ---------- This leads to some very believable situations: * The city center naturally flows from the harbor: your sole connection to the superpowers of the world. While there's some trade / economy within Tropico (ex: various food items, meat, entertainment, and maybe tourism), the vast majority of your wealth will be from trade with the superpowers you're aligned with. * Rich vs Poor citizens -- Poor citizens work the mines. Educated citizens can be university professors, pharmacists, or engineers (who can turn raw petroleum into plastic and sell for even more money to the superpowers). Rich people want to live in nice houses and drive cars. Poor citizens can't even afford to ride the bus and walk everywhere (meaning you need to plan poor communities very differently than rich communities). * "Ghettos" -- If you have a valuable resource in a far-off corner of your island (such as Coal, Gold, Bauxite, Oil, or Uranium), you naturally have to build a mine over there. But your workers also need to live there (otherwise they'll spend too much time traveling between the city center and the mine, never actually working). Your compromise is to build a low-quality housing area... a "Ghetto", with just barely enough needs to survive. That way, your workers are encouraged to stay on that corner of the island without spending too much of their free time walking back and forth to the higher quality town center. Raw materials (mines) don't have as much value as higher-grades of products, so its not worth the investment improving that corner of the island. Besides, if you upgraded all of the housing in the "Ghetto" area, those workers couldn't afford those houses. I guess you can enact the "free housing" edict, but that pisses of the USA-superpower (though it makes you closer to the USSR...). Free-housing also means free: you no longer get income from homes but instead lose money on every house. So its harder to make money. ----------- Ceasar / Pharaoh also did the rich/poor thing better IMO (the richest citizens leave the workforce!! You may suddenly find yourself in a worker shortage if you "upgrade" your citizens too far). A big issue with Sim City / City Skylines is that the entire interaction of rich / poor is completely neglected.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I just want Banished, but with better performance and with some basic AoE elements of an RTS. Fend off raiders, create military units, deal with pillaging. I remember the guy at CrystalRock talking about it saying the way the AI determines what to do is the primary reason it's a little slow as populations get larger since they dynamically change the items they get and where they go on the fly. Songs of Syx however seems like the real deal. I haven't bought it but it looks very promising in terms of what Banished couldn't entirely deliver.
- mastax 5y ago
  The Anno series is somewhat in this direction.
- mastax 5y ago
  Rise to Ruins is also somewhat in that vein - more of a city-builder combined with a tower-defense game.
larsiusprime 5y ago
> 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 collector visiting the village, counting the sheaves by the side of the road, selecting the calves and chickens. This way, the experiences of our medieval forebears are visualized and may help to educate the public about medieval village life. This is the part that's most interesting to me. I always feel tax policy & land use is very rarely explored in games; in most of these games if you can set tax rates at all it always seems to be a straight tax on productivity so you just have to pick the amount of deadweight loss you're willing to accept to generate the revenue you need to run your government. There's also very rarely any distinction between government spending and private spending, and how government spending on public goods influences the asset values of private interests. You could make an entire game about just that subject. EDIT: As a follow-up, I found this history of land & tax policy in Denmark going back to the middle ages to be quite fascinating and might be a useful point of contact for this sort of thing: https://bibliotek1.dk/english/history/centuries-of-experience-with-land-taxation-in-denmark https://bibliotek1.dk/english/history/centuries-of-experienc...
- Macha 5y ago
  The closest to modelling this skimming comes from Tropico, where the player's offshore bank account is effectively the player's "score", but the process of skimming off money to the bank account causes problems for your settlement.
- mrVentures2 5y ago
  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.
  - larsiusprime 5y ago
    That's cool! Does it say what exactly you are taxing (labor, land, capital, income, wealth)?, or is that left abstract?
goda90 5y ago
I'd be curious to hear this professor's take on the villages of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which is a medieval RPG that attempts to bring some aspects of realism. It even has a DLC where a lord appoints the player to be the bailiff for an effort to rebuild an abandoned fort town, and you work with the "master builder" to choose what industries to foster, while bringing in money and skilled workers from elsewhere.
- jhgb 5y ago
  Clearly the environment in KC:D is historically accurate because it's derived from extant historical records.
smoldesu 5y ago
My favorite medieval city-builders aren't historically accurate at all: namely Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress keep me coming back for more. I've never been a huge fan of 4x titles or real-time strategy, but the gameplay loop of these titles feels the most "authentic" to me. I think most people will agree, too: confining a role-playing game to the accuracy of non-fiction isn't much of a roleplaying game at all.
tills13 5y ago
I feel like the author doesn't understand the point of games... Sorry! Your villagers all died by a plague. Game over!
- dragontamer 5y ago
  I mean... I found Oregon Trail fun despite dying of dysentery more times than I could count. The thing about games is that when everyone dies, you just click the "New Game" button and try again. Failing over-and-over again in a game is allowed. In fact, I dare say that modern games don't provide enough room for failure compared to older games.
- mcphage 5y ago
  Given the popularity of Dwarf Fortress, I'm not sure that the author is wrong.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  The author addresses in a section how well or not well this realism could potentially interact with actual gameplay and fun.
- stordoff 5y ago
  See the "Why not?" section: "There are some good reasons why city building games are not that historically accurate and instead adhere to the established formula of the city building game." I'd say the author understands perfectly well. It's still interesting to discuss where they deviate from reality and to what extent.
danso 5y ago
My first reaction to this headline was "Oh my god, there exists a blog that combines my 2 favorite rabbit holes: computer games and ancient history" — i.e. filfre.net and acoup.blog
modernerd 5y ago
Townscaper and Dorfromantik are more fun for me than any city builder or Sim game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1291340/Townscaper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1291340/Townscaper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1455840/Dorfromantik/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1455840/Dorfromantik/ I like them because they're _not_ rooted in realism, so they're free from the things that some days feel more like work than play (tax collection, agricultural shortfalls, physical material limits etc.).
- agentwiggles 5y ago
  Those both look really cool, thanks for sharing! I especially love Townscaper's self description as being more of a toy than a game. I love toys! Whether they are physical objects or programs there is something so _lovable_ to me about using craftsmanship and creativity to create something for the sole (and very noble) purpose of just being fun to play with. I think I'll have to buy Townscaper and engage in some goal-free play tonight!
INTPenis 5y ago
No mention of Ostriv. That Cities Skylines screenshot is amazing but definitely heavily modded. But I'd love to see the author try Ostriv because while it is very unpolished it does allow for free placement of buildings. You can actually construct a little place similar to that screenshot from Cities skylines in Ostriv with ease. The problem of course is that you want good supply lines and he illustrates that in his medieval village plans from real archaeology. How they all fan out from a central point.
malkia 5y ago
I dunno about historical accuracy, but seeing K&M again brings good memories - also such good graphics that hasn't dated (IMHO).
samstave 5y ago
OH MY GOD! The FIRST game (and one I LOVE so much) that popped into my head just upon reading the post title was "Knights and Merchants" -- Played the SHIT out of that game while at Intel... All nighters and such. Clicked the link thinking no way that game would be in here -- and its the FIRST image on the submission! Great post.
deleted 5y ago
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mimixco 5y ago
I love these kind of games and others have mentioned Tropico 6 as a standout in the field. I've put lots of hours in that game and it's amazingly subtle and complex. There are many, many ways to achieve whatever you want, but also several hard constraints that you have to work around. If you want to be rich (treasury over $1M, for example), you have let people live in shacks while you build up foreign relations until you can get ridiculous prices for your goods. If you don't have several contracts at 70% over standard price, you can't really get big. You also can't be totally arbitrary in what industries you decide to develop. If you get in good with a country and your island can produce what they will pay (extra) for, you kind of have to do it, regardless of whether it makes your island ugly or puts people in shacks to work there. If you don't give in on the natural resources and foreign demands, you'll never have enough in the treasury to really help people. Kind of a disturbing realism there. Getting those contracts means you have to give in to foreign demands, like building a $2,000 embassy for China when you'd probably, as a person, think you should buy houses for your workers. Turns out, they'd rather have bread and circuses and a strong economy and you're better off pleasing your betters until you have lots of steady cash flow coming in every month. And this is just one scenario. There are many ways to play the game that aren't even about the economy. You can run it as a prison island, a military scenario, a spy vs. spy setup, or any combination of these. I think the best thing about Tropico is that, rather than one goal, you as the dictator choose what kind of goals you want and that leads to entirely different kinds of island setups and gameplay.
cupcake-unicorn 5y ago
Making stuff that historically accurate also would make it less fun, I think, even with the Sims and stuff and SimCity a lot of stuff is abstracted away. Otherwise you're just doing work :) This is such a funny youtube channel about a game, Saelig, that I think it supposed to be more accurate than most, but of course since it's a game (and in beta) you can do pretty ridiculous things with it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxRPirVgkpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxRPirVgkpU
occupy_paul_st 5y ago
Since a common critique of city sims is that they are not organic enough, it's exciting to see this case where the mechanics are TOO organic!
thewebcount 5y ago
This was a really cool article! Fascinating to learn how some of this stuff really worked. That said, game makers need to balance making their game fun, having a goal, and not being too tedious. It takes a lot to run a town and most of it isn't fun, so it's understandable that they simplify and leave things out. I've had a lot of fun playing Outlanders[0] on Apple Arcade. It's similar to what's described here. You get a small island and a few people and have to make a town using only resources from the island. Looks like it's set in maybe the 1700s or 1800s. Works on the iPhone and is a great time killer. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/outlanders/id1463407936 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/outlanders/id1463407936
at_a_remove 5y ago
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 has an assassins' guild, with roughly ten members. Do they take turns, each assassinating one person a year? Because that's roughly how infrequently it would have to occur for their little club to escape notice. Hardly worth paying dues for, sitting around, discussing that murder you managed five years ago and how you look forward to one in another five. Take a look at city-building ... in most games you rarely see the hub-and-spoke develop around a port city, despite that being a prevalent pattern, or the unique feel of isoheight versus steep streets in a hilly region (the San Francisco pattern). If you watch city maps over hundreds of years, many forces are at work, and I think they might be simulable but I don't know if the end result would be enjoyable enjoy to warrant it. If you look at our actual cave ecosystems, troglobionts, which are adapted for living strictly in caves, are typically quite tiny. There's simply no food down there! Resources are scarce. Hence you would get no gelatinous cubes or hook horrors or carrion crawlers stumbling around the caves, lurking about, waiting for adventurers or the average bear. Instead you get some very small, pale shrimp. This is not exciting for the adventurer. Some handwaving of a source of energy called "Faerzress" eventually takes place and is only vaguely acceptable if one does not look hard, serving as kind of a bottom trophic level for the game. The balance between actual plausibilty and what one might call "fantastical satiation" is quite difficult. Your large-sized dragon, perhaps your standard-issue Vermithrax Pejorative, would need something like a log flume ride of virgins delivered straight to its gullet to sustain its bulk, not to mention the caloric expenditure. Clearly, this isn't very satisfying for your story-telling, either. The balance is rough and I suspect that nitpicking in the name of accuracy can undermine most of what is constructed.
- cperciva 5y ago
  Bizarrely, a town of less than four thousand people actually has an assassins' guild, with roughly ten members. Do they take turns, each assassinating one person a year? The charitable interpretation might be that, in addition to being responsible for assassinations in the town, the guild is also responsible for assassinations in the surrounding countryside; in medieval times the rural population significantly outnumbered the urban population. (Also, a world with Raise Dead might be able to sustain a greater rate of assassinations per capital per year...) But yes, plausibility gets distorted in favour of playability.
blunte 5y ago
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 fun.
- mmcdermott 5y ago
  That tracks, I think. Most strategy games are about things that real people had to be paid to do. There haven't historically been many who would govern a province for "fun". For money, glory or influence, sure, but not really for the visceral thrill of the thing.
- mcv 5y ago
  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.
  - blunte 5y ago
    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.
finwhat 5y ago
I wonder how much of our focus on growth in 'city builder' games stems from the US's past with colonization, and its current cultural heft. if the americas and 'virgin' (i.e. easily depopulated) areas existed, would this concept be so popular?
- freemint 5y ago
  I personally doubt it. The 4x play loop emerges naturally once you start to populate an empty map. There is also enough excuses about historic (pre medieval) colonialism that this give similar justification independent from whatever happened in the USA.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I could read a entire book on this topic.
jorblumesea 5y ago
> the demography of many European villages remained relatively stable between the twelfth and the eighteenth century I don't think this is true. Medieval demographics is a very interesting subject and seems to have fluctuated a fair amount. Medieval populations doubled between 1100 and 1300. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography#High_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography#High_Middl...
skmurphy 5y ago
A realistic Medieval city game could do a good job of teaching key aspects of history. I learned a lot from SimCity about thinking in systems. I think well-designed games can teach quite a bit. It would also be an interesting challenge to model the Industrial Revolution accurately. The Civilization tech tree is a good first approximation but in reading "The Lunar Men" by Jenny Uglow "The Lever of Riches" by Joel Mokyr "Turning points in Western Technology by Donald Cardwell you get a very different impression. This could tie in to "Science of Progress" thinking in https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-...
daltonlp 5y ago
A remarkably fun and educational medieval city-builder game: https://scriptwelder.itch.io/waterworks https://scriptwelder.itch.io/waterworks It's an absolute gem.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
After the Black Death, many villages were too small to be functional. You needed a cobbler, smith, cooper, farmers, bakers etc. So Lords just moved peasants around like pawns and consolidated villages. Also they changed from farmholds to large grazing areas and obsoleted some villages. Obsolete villagers were just 'let go' meaning "Load up the wagon and leave! Good luck finding another home!" The Scottish Highland Clearances resulted in the wholesale exportation of entire populations to Nova Scotia. At least they had a chance of finding some land to homestead. These kind of arbitrary actions served more to sculpt the landscape of villages and towns, than all the Villager's efforts ever did.
brutus1213 5y ago
I love this genre and RTSes. I want to recommend a game called Northgard (really an RTS and if you into vikings, norse mythology) but has some interesting and novel game mechanics. These include the effects of Winter and periodic calamities (fire, frozen waterways).
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mxfh 5y ago
I just recall that Stronghold (2001) was being quite honest with that all you economic settling exploits are just there to bet taxed into oblivion to fuel your local feudal war machine.
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
In case anyone is wondering. seigneury the linguistic equivalent in other latin languages as Don, Señor, Monsieur, or less so as senior (Mister) in english, in the context of the article its understood to mean the "employee" duties owed to the lord/boss
r0s 5y ago
I'd like to recommend Kingdom for an unusually elegant take on these game tropes https://www.kingdomthegame.com/ https://www.kingdomthegame.com/ An apparent city builder at first glance, it lands firmly in "survival" territory. The ultra-simple control scheme belies surprising depth and brutal difficulty.
unglaublich 5y ago
If you find this interesting, you might want to read: https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/16152.html https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/16152.html
SimianLogic2 5y ago
I learned most of what I know about the Three Kingdoms era from playing hundreds (thousands?) of hours of Dynasty Warriors. I later read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the game was pretty close! (Holy shit I had a lot of free time before I had kids.)
- jaza 5y ago
  Amen! (To having free time pre kids). Waiting for mine (currently 4 years old) to be old enough to play any and all video games, at which point I hope to have a good excuse to start gaming again myself.
MaxLeiter 5y ago
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://shiningrocksoftware.com/ 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.shiningrocksoftware.com/2019-08-12-recurring-nightmares/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201208071205/https://www.shini...
SahAssar 5y ago
> However, also in Banished it is your goal to overcome the stagnation and lead your settlement to expansion. Is it? My view of banished was always that the goal was survival and living with the finite resources. Of course at some point you realize that with your foresters, miners, stonecutters, tailors, brewers, priests, teachers, blacksmiths and all the other people you need you have to build more food production, which requires more people and so on. But I have never felt in banished that my goal is expansion, my goal was always a stable equilibrium that I could hold without touching it. It's sort of like software development for a specific problem, the best solution is one you never have to think about again.
rossdavidh 5y ago
"Since many of us are working from home in these trying times, it seems safe to assume that more people than ever are indulging in playing the occasional computer game..." Hey! No way, man. Working, we're all working, honest.
stakkur 5y ago
‘Accuracy’ is a nonsensical idea in fiction. Like all fictional stories, the purpose of games is not to be ‘realistic’ or ‘accurate’. It’s to get you to willingly suspend disbelief. It’s light entertainment for goodness sake, not a doctoral thesis.
pugworthy 5y ago
I'd like to see a treatment of Hamurabi - a very old text based game. not that it's a city building game or medieval times, but it's kind of a precursor in an ancient organism kind of way.
hoseja 5y ago
Ostriv (might scare the westerner for being set somewhere in ~Serbia) Upcoming Manor Lords There are many of these games, with varying levels of quality.
shezi 5y ago
For a historically accurate overview over how cities actually were, and on how they sustained their size, I recommend Bret Devereaux' excellent history blog: https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-pa...
AfterShave 5y ago
One very interesting feature of older agriculture is the way the fields were split up. With tons and tons of narrow strips of land in the open-field system. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system) In Sweden the gradual reforms towards today's uniform, or at least closely situated fields. Took as long as until the 18th century to really become a thing. I suspect similar reforms elsewhere were just as late.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
So basically this guy wants a dwarf fortress level city sim.

459 points by jsnell 5y ago

The city builder has its origins far back in the 1990s in the combination of the strategy genre and the management genre, leading to games such as Sim City (1989), Caesar (1992) and Age of Empires (1997). Utopia for Intellivision/Aquarius came out in 1982. It was one of my favorite games growing up. I highly recommend it if you're into these kinds of games, or retro gaming. I guess I was retro gaming when I played it in the late 80s/early 90s, but we didn't call it that then. Some caveats, It's a 2 player game, you need to read the instructions, and it's annoying without the overlays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(video_game) edit: When Sim City, and Populous made their way to Super Nintendo, I remember explaining to my older cousin that they were kind of like Utopia.

svachalek 5y ago
Interesting. We actually had an Intellivision back in the day, but not this game. I think I would have loved it.
- xbar 5y ago
  I still play this game against my brother-in-law when I visit for the holidays. He's gotten really good, and I haven't played it consistently since 1984.

sprafa 5y ago

It’s interesting and most likely not applicable - for the very same reasons you cant get realistic sword fighting (or even street fighting) in most Hollywood movies: realistic fighting doesn’t look as exciting as the fake thing. Glad the author sees into that very clearly. * Could be an interesting art game tho as someone pointed out below

cryptoz 5y ago
There's a really great scene in HBO's Barry (Bill Hader) with an attempt at a more realistic fight scene. It's quite interesting actually! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MjQRqEk5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MjQRqEk5M Spoilers possible if you haven't seen the show. Definitely recommend it btw.
- philwelch 5y ago
  Wow, that was very entertaining though obviously a bit comedic. Both characters also seem to have much better technique than conditioning.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The same episode, hilariously, includes one of their least realistic fight scenes. Wild ride.
- sprafa 5y ago
  If you watch MMA you would know that this fight would be over around the 1 minute mark. The impression of realism you get here is not real realism - just a way to simulate it, still holding onto the tropes of the genre and the “time dilation” necessary for suspense in filmmaking. Real street fights don’t last long, and fights between trained fighters are even shorter. one sucker punch or one good chokehold is all it takes.
0xdada 5y ago
> Medieval villagers were often living on the edge of subsistence. Agricultural surpluses were skimmed by the church and the feudal lords. Bad harvests, banditry, warfare and disease might decimate a village community at any time. Dwarf Fortress has shown that this would in fact be quite exciting, but it would probably be a lot more niche.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  > but it would probably be a lot more niche Dwarf Fortress also proving that if you hit the correct niche that your game can get a huge following if you're scratching an itch people never knew they had.

publicola1990 5y ago

Even modern city builders are inaccurate in the sense that timelines of how long it takes to build things aren't Modelled correct. Plus organic city growth is rarely simulated. Cities skylines for example has no concept of slums. Also the annoying Western/Eurocentrism. Eg: See the recent game Dorfromantik, its aesthetically pleasing, it is rustic european scenery, but why isn't it not set in Indonesia or Ecuador or Uzbekistan?

ThePadawan 5y ago
> Eg: See the recent game Dorfromantik, its aesthetically pleasing, its rustic european scene, but why isn't it not set in Indonesia or Ecuador or Uzbekistan? That seems a bit harsh judgement for a game with a German name, made by 4 German game design students living in Berlin, with funds from the German state [0]. [0] https://toukana.itch.io/ https://toukana.itch.io/
- Derek_Mudaxe 5y ago
  Yeah, if a European developer attempted to make a non-European city builder then they'd probably get accused of appropriation, and in addition would also get slammed for the inaccuracies and socio-cultural misunderstandings that would inevitably manifest. Also, what stops developers in those aforementioned regions making their own games, there are plenty of relatively cheap and reasonable options in terms of game engines.
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  You make an excellent point.
grawprog 5y ago
>Cities skylines for example has no concept of slums. That was one thing it seemed to simulate pretty well in my experience. Last time I played it, I set up the city with a bunch of low income housing areas in industrial zones, roads all through them, small housing plots next to industry and under overpasses and stuff. The neighbourhoods looked exactly like the low income housing neighbourhoods around industrial areas I've seen in real life. The people in those houses were typically unhealthier than in other areas. I put the closest hospitals and schools just outside those areas, the waste water from the city was dumped nearby etc. It's quite possible to create extremely disparate neighborhoods and areas. From slums to McMansion filled suburbs to bustling industrial areas. Sadly though, my in game city started with me trying to model my real city. It turned out pretty accurate at least as far as neighbourhood layout and visual income disparity went.

littlecranky67 5y ago

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 shops walking to it (also depending on terrain and usage of i.e. horse carriages).

mpfundstein 5y ago
The settlers.did this AFAIK
- skitter 5y ago
  Specifically Settlers 3 & 4. In 1, 2, 6 and I believe 7, paths are build manually; 5 doesn't have roads.
- FooHentai 5y ago
  I recall in settlers 2 you put down the initial walkway, but it widening into a 2-way path and eventually a carriageway that donkeys would traverse was down to how much traffic it saw.
- sedatk 5y ago
  Back in the 90's, just to set the record straight. It was probably the first game that did it.
paavohtl 5y ago
This is exactly what Foundation [1] (which was also shown in a screenshot in the article) does. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/690830/Foundation/
- Aperocky 5y ago
  Looks like it's windows only..

pphysch 5y ago

The basic problem is the disparity in control mechanisms. As a city-builder player, you have central planning capabilities that would make Stalin jealous--and were completely unattainable in the relevant time period due to poor communications technology. One solution is to make "social power"/"control"/"influence" an actual gameplay mechanic, rather than leaving it entirely to the players cognition/dexterity. Lack of player control is counterbalanced by powerful AI. For example, at the start of the game you might play as a local authority that manages land rights. You merely specify who owns what land and have limited control over how they use it. Eventually, the peasants build organic settlements, and if they get big enough, you can get transferred there and act as mayor--with the ability to set more precise local policy and therefore begin to shape the town... And so on and so forth.

svachalek 5y ago
According to TFA however, one flaw in medieval city builders is that they are too organic, when actual villages were centrally planned. The more major one however is that growth was apparently near hopeless, which would really make them play like a different genre entirely.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I think with modern hindsight, growth would be fairly straightforward, but it’s anachronistic to bring 21st century intellectual tools to bear in a 10th Century context, like bringing a machine gun (and plenty of ammo) to a medieval battlefield. Even things like knowing about sanitation (so don’t put wells where you dump your sewer) would help massively.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Villages are planned to some extent, but they almost certainly are placed in areas with existing settlers i.e. productive capacity. The farms (settlers) come first, then the village follows.

slingnow 5y ago

This just in: video game discovered that doesn't completely adhere to <history / physics / reality / etc>. More at 11.

Macha 5y ago
This is a case of HN's clickbait prevention hurting the title. The original title is "Why Medieval city builder video games are historically inaccurate" and considers some of the details rarely represented. However to stop titles like "Why are 9/10 moms using XYZ?" that are badly disguised ads, HN strips opening questions from titles.

jonbaer 5y ago

This is probably one of the better reasons why I like 0AD [1] more than anything (besides being open sourced [2]). If you read the forums and traverse the amazing artwork it's like a history lesson and there was no 0AD so they can mix/match. [1] - https://play0ad.com/ https://play0ad.com/ [2] - https://github.com/0ad/0ad https://github.com/0ad/0ad

duxup 5y ago

I always thought city builders are a weird mix of sort of free market / authoritarian beliefs: In most city builder games involve some planning, incentives provided, and people just show up, do their thing, growth is endless, build a business, and there you go. On the other hand in most city builders the player makes all the decisions and can act at will with no regard to his local citizens ;)

drewzero1 5y ago
Can you imagine a real mayor simulator, where you'd have to get elected and answer to the city council and constituents? I expect most would find that boring, but it might be a fun (or at least educational) experience for some.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Hearts of Iron (3 in particular) One of the biggest problems with playing as the USA in Hearts of Iron is that you need to actually convince your Democracy / citizens that its worthwhile to go to war. And unless you click the "Crisis of Democracy" button (aka: turn yourself into a dictatorship), you don't actually have full control over the policies of your country. Which is why its more fun to play as Germany / Hitler (where the button was already pressed before the game started). But playing as the USA (where you have to build support and convert the peacetime economy into a military economy in time for the war) is a big challenge... a "hard mode" for those who have already mastered the military portions of the game.
  - DaedPsyker 5y ago
    I think HOI problem (more familiar with 4) is that it feels much more half baked. US Congress is mostly click a few event popups, click a few policy stuff in a menu and see the congress members just flip. It's more shoehorning it into the HOI system. I think you could make the process fun, but in paradox style games where you need to generalise a system to fit everywhere in the world, it can fall flat.
    - 5y ago

1123581321 5y ago

Good article. The difficulty with simulating these plots and new settlements is that the player’s interests aren’t the same as any individual freeman’s. Letting the player map out fields could certainly be done, but it wouldn’t meaningfully change the game as conventional city-builder players of any skill also have a layout in mind before they begin the game. Players also value a high quantity of content and replayability, again at odds with the interest of a medieval freeman, churchman or lord who preferred consistency to novelty for the reasons mentioned in the preface.

Rd6n6 5y ago

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 <country> during <year>? It’s an interesting time with massive social, scientific, and religious change, it’s been really fun to read about so far Edit: if anybody has books or articles to recommend, I’d love to hear about them

mastax 5y ago
ACoUP is incredible, though not specific to that time period: https://acoup.blog/resources-for-world-builders/ https://acoup.blog/resources-for-world-builders/
- veddox 5y ago
  I was waiting for ACOUP to pop up in this thread - surprised it took so long :D
Retric 5y ago
17th century Europe was quite modern with for example long distance power transmission. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmi... The spinning wheel similarly had already transformed transformed the making of cloth and rope. By the 1700’s cottage industries where setup to leverage the free time of village workers on an industrial scale. Communities would specialize based on local resources including transportation networks. Also, rivers where the medieval equivalent of highways and railroads. A 500 mile journey by waterways was generally cheaper than a 50 mile trip by land.
- shezi 5y ago
  According to AcoUP, transport cost over land is five times that over rivers, and twenty times that over sea. https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-cities-have-curves/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/19/the-lonely-city-part-ii-real-c...

hyperion2010 5y ago

Figuring out how to take these realities and tweak the gameplay cycle to make it "fun" seems like a fantastic design challenge. I wonder what the author would think of Dwarf Fortress forts that have been played on the surface.

mLuby 5y ago
I played a group of dwarves who, instead of burrowing into the mountain, deforested their land to make a town of wooden buildings on the surface (complete with archer towers, drawbridge, and moat). Naturally, the neighboring elves weren't too pleased with all the tree felling and eventually wiped the dwarves out.

dragontamer 5y ago

City builders, such as Sim City or even City Skylines are all inaccurate to various degrees. I find it more "honest" when Tropico 6 makes fun of the concept entirely: with your hackers stealing the White House from the US Government. Strangely enough, I find Tropico to be a more believable setting. * Citizen simulation: Citizens need to travel between different areas. Miners need to enter the mines, but when they get tired, they need to travel home to rest. Every now and then, they must travel to Church to fulfil their personal religious needs (religious citizens need more church than non-religious). Etc. etc. for all the personal needs of citizens (food, housing, religion, entertainment). Citizens also grow up: adults give birth to children, children go to school (or not: if you don't have schools they'll grow up uneducated), 20 years later they enter the workforce as either "uneducated", "high school" educated, or "college educated". Higher education levels can perform more jobs (ex: Petro-chemical engineer), while uneducated are forced into the lowest wage jobs (farming or mining). You do need farmers and miners however. So you kind of need to balance the number of high and low educated fellows in your island. * The economy: Tropico simulates a small island country in a world of "Superpowers". Tropico 6 has 4 ages and therefore different sets of superpowers. Early ages is "The Crown" (the sole superpower), your hypothetical king who sent you to colonize the island. Then comes "Axis" and "Allies" as the two superpowers. A few decades later you get USSR vs USA. Finally the superpowers split into the modern age (Europe, USA, Russia, China). * You're a small fish in the world. Your entire economy consists of satisfying the superpowers with goods. More advanced goods means more money from a superpower. Too much relations with one superpower (ex: USA) will piss off rival superpowers (ex: USSR in Cold War era). ---------- This leads to some very believable situations: * The city center naturally flows from the harbor: your sole connection to the superpowers of the world. While there's some trade / economy within Tropico (ex: various food items, meat, entertainment, and maybe tourism), the vast majority of your wealth will be from trade with the superpowers you're aligned with. * Rich vs Poor citizens -- Poor citizens work the mines. Educated citizens can be university professors, pharmacists, or engineers (who can turn raw petroleum into plastic and sell for even more money to the superpowers). Rich people want to live in nice houses and drive cars. Poor citizens can't even afford to ride the bus and walk everywhere (meaning you need to plan poor communities very differently than rich communities). * "Ghettos" -- If you have a valuable resource in a far-off corner of your island (such as Coal, Gold, Bauxite, Oil, or Uranium), you naturally have to build a mine over there. But your workers also need to live there (otherwise they'll spend too much time traveling between the city center and the mine, never actually working). Your compromise is to build a low-quality housing area... a "Ghetto", with just barely enough needs to survive. That way, your workers are encouraged to stay on that corner of the island without spending too much of their free time walking back and forth to the higher quality town center. Raw materials (mines) don't have as much value as higher-grades of products, so its not worth the investment improving that corner of the island. Besides, if you upgraded all of the housing in the "Ghetto" area, those workers couldn't afford those houses. I guess you can enact the "free housing" edict, but that pisses of the USA-superpower (though it makes you closer to the USSR...). Free-housing also means free: you no longer get income from homes but instead lose money on every house. So its harder to make money. ----------- Ceasar / Pharaoh also did the rich/poor thing better IMO (the richest citizens leave the workforce!! You may suddenly find yourself in a worker shortage if you "upgrade" your citizens too far). A big issue with Sim City / City Skylines is that the entire interaction of rich / poor is completely neglected.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I just want Banished, but with better performance and with some basic AoE elements of an RTS. Fend off raiders, create military units, deal with pillaging. I remember the guy at CrystalRock talking about it saying the way the AI determines what to do is the primary reason it's a little slow as populations get larger since they dynamically change the items they get and where they go on the fly. Songs of Syx however seems like the real deal. I haven't bought it but it looks very promising in terms of what Banished couldn't entirely deliver.

mastax 5y ago
The Anno series is somewhat in this direction.
mastax 5y ago
Rise to Ruins is also somewhat in that vein - more of a city-builder combined with a tower-defense game.

larsiusprime 5y ago

> 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 collector visiting the village, counting the sheaves by the side of the road, selecting the calves and chickens. This way, the experiences of our medieval forebears are visualized and may help to educate the public about medieval village life. This is the part that's most interesting to me. I always feel tax policy & land use is very rarely explored in games; in most of these games if you can set tax rates at all it always seems to be a straight tax on productivity so you just have to pick the amount of deadweight loss you're willing to accept to generate the revenue you need to run your government. There's also very rarely any distinction between government spending and private spending, and how government spending on public goods influences the asset values of private interests. You could make an entire game about just that subject. EDIT: As a follow-up, I found this history of land & tax policy in Denmark going back to the middle ages to be quite fascinating and might be a useful point of contact for this sort of thing: https://bibliotek1.dk/english/history/centuries-of-experience-with-land-taxation-in-denmark https://bibliotek1.dk/english/history/centuries-of-experienc...

Macha 5y ago
The closest to modelling this skimming comes from Tropico, where the player's offshore bank account is effectively the player's "score", but the process of skimming off money to the bank account causes problems for your settlement.
mrVentures2 5y ago
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.
- larsiusprime 5y ago
  That's cool! Does it say what exactly you are taxing (labor, land, capital, income, wealth)?, or is that left abstract?

goda90 5y ago

I'd be curious to hear this professor's take on the villages of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which is a medieval RPG that attempts to bring some aspects of realism. It even has a DLC where a lord appoints the player to be the bailiff for an effort to rebuild an abandoned fort town, and you work with the "master builder" to choose what industries to foster, while bringing in money and skilled workers from elsewhere.

jhgb 5y ago
Clearly the environment in KC:D is historically accurate because it's derived from extant historical records.

smoldesu 5y ago

My favorite medieval city-builders aren't historically accurate at all: namely Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress keep me coming back for more. I've never been a huge fan of 4x titles or real-time strategy, but the gameplay loop of these titles feels the most "authentic" to me. I think most people will agree, too: confining a role-playing game to the accuracy of non-fiction isn't much of a roleplaying game at all.

tills13 5y ago

I feel like the author doesn't understand the point of games... Sorry! Your villagers all died by a plague. Game over!

dragontamer 5y ago
I mean... I found Oregon Trail fun despite dying of dysentery more times than I could count. The thing about games is that when everyone dies, you just click the "New Game" button and try again. Failing over-and-over again in a game is allowed. In fact, I dare say that modern games don't provide enough room for failure compared to older games.
mcphage 5y ago
Given the popularity of Dwarf Fortress, I'm not sure that the author is wrong.
anyfoo 5y ago
The author addresses in a section how well or not well this realism could potentially interact with actual gameplay and fun.
stordoff 5y ago
See the "Why not?" section: "There are some good reasons why city building games are not that historically accurate and instead adhere to the established formula of the city building game." I'd say the author understands perfectly well. It's still interesting to discuss where they deviate from reality and to what extent.

danso 5y ago

My first reaction to this headline was "Oh my god, there exists a blog that combines my 2 favorite rabbit holes: computer games and ancient history" — i.e. filfre.net and acoup.blog

modernerd 5y ago

Townscaper and Dorfromantik are more fun for me than any city builder or Sim game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1291340/Townscaper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1291340/Townscaper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1455840/Dorfromantik/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1455840/Dorfromantik/ I like them because they're _not_ rooted in realism, so they're free from the things that some days feel more like work than play (tax collection, agricultural shortfalls, physical material limits etc.).

agentwiggles 5y ago
Those both look really cool, thanks for sharing! I especially love Townscaper's self description as being more of a toy than a game. I love toys! Whether they are physical objects or programs there is something so _lovable_ to me about using craftsmanship and creativity to create something for the sole (and very noble) purpose of just being fun to play with. I think I'll have to buy Townscaper and engage in some goal-free play tonight!

INTPenis 5y ago

No mention of Ostriv. That Cities Skylines screenshot is amazing but definitely heavily modded. But I'd love to see the author try Ostriv because while it is very unpolished it does allow for free placement of buildings. You can actually construct a little place similar to that screenshot from Cities skylines in Ostriv with ease. The problem of course is that you want good supply lines and he illustrates that in his medieval village plans from real archaeology. How they all fan out from a central point.

malkia 5y ago

I dunno about historical accuracy, but seeing K&M again brings good memories - also such good graphics that hasn't dated (IMHO).

samstave 5y ago

OH MY GOD! The FIRST game (and one I LOVE so much) that popped into my head just upon reading the post title was "Knights and Merchants" -- Played the SHIT out of that game while at Intel... All nighters and such. Clicked the link thinking no way that game would be in here -- and its the FIRST image on the submission! Great post.

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mimixco 5y ago

I love these kind of games and others have mentioned Tropico 6 as a standout in the field. I've put lots of hours in that game and it's amazingly subtle and complex. There are many, many ways to achieve whatever you want, but also several hard constraints that you have to work around. If you want to be rich (treasury over $1M, for example), you have let people live in shacks while you build up foreign relations until you can get ridiculous prices for your goods. If you don't have several contracts at 70% over standard price, you can't really get big. You also can't be totally arbitrary in what industries you decide to develop. If you get in good with a country and your island can produce what they will pay (extra) for, you kind of have to do it, regardless of whether it makes your island ugly or puts people in shacks to work there. If you don't give in on the natural resources and foreign demands, you'll never have enough in the treasury to really help people. Kind of a disturbing realism there. Getting those contracts means you have to give in to foreign demands, like building a $2,000 embassy for China when you'd probably, as a person, think you should buy houses for your workers. Turns out, they'd rather have bread and circuses and a strong economy and you're better off pleasing your betters until you have lots of steady cash flow coming in every month. And this is just one scenario. There are many ways to play the game that aren't even about the economy. You can run it as a prison island, a military scenario, a spy vs. spy setup, or any combination of these. I think the best thing about Tropico is that, rather than one goal, you as the dictator choose what kind of goals you want and that leads to entirely different kinds of island setups and gameplay.

cupcake-unicorn 5y ago

Making stuff that historically accurate also would make it less fun, I think, even with the Sims and stuff and SimCity a lot of stuff is abstracted away. Otherwise you're just doing work :) This is such a funny youtube channel about a game, Saelig, that I think it supposed to be more accurate than most, but of course since it's a game (and in beta) you can do pretty ridiculous things with it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxRPirVgkpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxRPirVgkpU

occupy_paul_st 5y ago

Since a common critique of city sims is that they are not organic enough, it's exciting to see this case where the mechanics are TOO organic!

thewebcount 5y ago

This was a really cool article! Fascinating to learn how some of this stuff really worked. That said, game makers need to balance making their game fun, having a goal, and not being too tedious. It takes a lot to run a town and most of it isn't fun, so it's understandable that they simplify and leave things out. I've had a lot of fun playing Outlanders[0] on Apple Arcade. It's similar to what's described here. You get a small island and a few people and have to make a town using only resources from the island. Looks like it's set in maybe the 1700s or 1800s. Works on the iPhone and is a great time killer. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/outlanders/id1463407936 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/outlanders/id1463407936

at_a_remove 5y ago

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 has an assassins' guild, with roughly ten members. Do they take turns, each assassinating one person a year? Because that's roughly how infrequently it would have to occur for their little club to escape notice. Hardly worth paying dues for, sitting around, discussing that murder you managed five years ago and how you look forward to one in another five. Take a look at city-building ... in most games you rarely see the hub-and-spoke develop around a port city, despite that being a prevalent pattern, or the unique feel of isoheight versus steep streets in a hilly region (the San Francisco pattern). If you watch city maps over hundreds of years, many forces are at work, and I think they might be simulable but I don't know if the end result would be enjoyable enjoy to warrant it. If you look at our actual cave ecosystems, troglobionts, which are adapted for living strictly in caves, are typically quite tiny. There's simply no food down there! Resources are scarce. Hence you would get no gelatinous cubes or hook horrors or carrion crawlers stumbling around the caves, lurking about, waiting for adventurers or the average bear. Instead you get some very small, pale shrimp. This is not exciting for the adventurer. Some handwaving of a source of energy called "Faerzress" eventually takes place and is only vaguely acceptable if one does not look hard, serving as kind of a bottom trophic level for the game. The balance between actual plausibilty and what one might call "fantastical satiation" is quite difficult. Your large-sized dragon, perhaps your standard-issue Vermithrax Pejorative, would need something like a log flume ride of virgins delivered straight to its gullet to sustain its bulk, not to mention the caloric expenditure. Clearly, this isn't very satisfying for your story-telling, either. The balance is rough and I suspect that nitpicking in the name of accuracy can undermine most of what is constructed.

cperciva 5y ago
Bizarrely, a town of less than four thousand people actually has an assassins' guild, with roughly ten members. Do they take turns, each assassinating one person a year? The charitable interpretation might be that, in addition to being responsible for assassinations in the town, the guild is also responsible for assassinations in the surrounding countryside; in medieval times the rural population significantly outnumbered the urban population. (Also, a world with Raise Dead might be able to sustain a greater rate of assassinations per capital per year...) But yes, plausibility gets distorted in favour of playability.

blunte 5y ago

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 fun.

mmcdermott 5y ago
That tracks, I think. Most strategy games are about things that real people had to be paid to do. There haven't historically been many who would govern a province for "fun". For money, glory or influence, sure, but not really for the visceral thrill of the thing.
mcv 5y ago
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.
- blunte 5y ago
  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.

finwhat 5y ago

I wonder how much of our focus on growth in 'city builder' games stems from the US's past with colonization, and its current cultural heft. if the americas and 'virgin' (i.e. easily depopulated) areas existed, would this concept be so popular?

freemint 5y ago
I personally doubt it. The 4x play loop emerges naturally once you start to populate an empty map. There is also enough excuses about historic (pre medieval) colonialism that this give similar justification independent from whatever happened in the USA.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I could read a entire book on this topic.

jorblumesea 5y ago

> the demography of many European villages remained relatively stable between the twelfth and the eighteenth century I don't think this is true. Medieval demographics is a very interesting subject and seems to have fluctuated a fair amount. Medieval populations doubled between 1100 and 1300. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography#High_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography#High_Middl...

skmurphy 5y ago

A realistic Medieval city game could do a good job of teaching key aspects of history. I learned a lot from SimCity about thinking in systems. I think well-designed games can teach quite a bit. It would also be an interesting challenge to model the Industrial Revolution accurately. The Civilization tech tree is a good first approximation but in reading "The Lunar Men" by Jenny Uglow "The Lever of Riches" by Joel Mokyr "Turning points in Western Technology by Donald Cardwell you get a very different impression. This could tie in to "Science of Progress" thinking in https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-...

daltonlp 5y ago

A remarkably fun and educational medieval city-builder game: https://scriptwelder.itch.io/waterworks https://scriptwelder.itch.io/waterworks It's an absolute gem.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

After the Black Death, many villages were too small to be functional. You needed a cobbler, smith, cooper, farmers, bakers etc. So Lords just moved peasants around like pawns and consolidated villages. Also they changed from farmholds to large grazing areas and obsoleted some villages. Obsolete villagers were just 'let go' meaning "Load up the wagon and leave! Good luck finding another home!" The Scottish Highland Clearances resulted in the wholesale exportation of entire populations to Nova Scotia. At least they had a chance of finding some land to homestead. These kind of arbitrary actions served more to sculpt the landscape of villages and towns, than all the Villager's efforts ever did.

brutus1213 5y ago

I love this genre and RTSes. I want to recommend a game called Northgard (really an RTS and if you into vikings, norse mythology) but has some interesting and novel game mechanics. These include the effects of Winter and periodic calamities (fire, frozen waterways).

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mxfh 5y ago

I just recall that Stronghold (2001) was being quite honest with that all you economic settling exploits are just there to bet taxed into oblivion to fuel your local feudal war machine.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

In case anyone is wondering. seigneury the linguistic equivalent in other latin languages as Don, Señor, Monsieur, or less so as senior (Mister) in english, in the context of the article its understood to mean the "employee" duties owed to the lord/boss

r0s 5y ago

I'd like to recommend Kingdom for an unusually elegant take on these game tropes https://www.kingdomthegame.com/ https://www.kingdomthegame.com/ An apparent city builder at first glance, it lands firmly in "survival" territory. The ultra-simple control scheme belies surprising depth and brutal difficulty.

unglaublich 5y ago

If you find this interesting, you might want to read: https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/16152.html https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/16152.html

SimianLogic2 5y ago

I learned most of what I know about the Three Kingdoms era from playing hundreds (thousands?) of hours of Dynasty Warriors. I later read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the game was pretty close! (Holy shit I had a lot of free time before I had kids.)

jaza 5y ago
Amen! (To having free time pre kids). Waiting for mine (currently 4 years old) to be old enough to play any and all video games, at which point I hope to have a good excuse to start gaming again myself.

MaxLeiter 5y ago

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://shiningrocksoftware.com/ 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.shiningrocksoftware.com/2019-08-12-recurring-nightmares/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201208071205/https://www.shini...

SahAssar 5y ago

> However, also in Banished it is your goal to overcome the stagnation and lead your settlement to expansion. Is it? My view of banished was always that the goal was survival and living with the finite resources. Of course at some point you realize that with your foresters, miners, stonecutters, tailors, brewers, priests, teachers, blacksmiths and all the other people you need you have to build more food production, which requires more people and so on. But I have never felt in banished that my goal is expansion, my goal was always a stable equilibrium that I could hold without touching it. It's sort of like software development for a specific problem, the best solution is one you never have to think about again.

rossdavidh 5y ago

"Since many of us are working from home in these trying times, it seems safe to assume that more people than ever are indulging in playing the occasional computer game..." Hey! No way, man. Working, we're all working, honest.

stakkur 5y ago

‘Accuracy’ is a nonsensical idea in fiction. Like all fictional stories, the purpose of games is not to be ‘realistic’ or ‘accurate’. It’s to get you to willingly suspend disbelief. It’s light entertainment for goodness sake, not a doctoral thesis.

pugworthy 5y ago

I'd like to see a treatment of Hamurabi - a very old text based game. not that it's a city building game or medieval times, but it's kind of a precursor in an ancient organism kind of way.

hoseja 5y ago

Ostriv (might scare the westerner for being set somewhere in ~Serbia) Upcoming Manor Lords There are many of these games, with varying levels of quality.

shezi 5y ago

For a historically accurate overview over how cities actually were, and on how they sustained their size, I recommend Bret Devereaux' excellent history blog: https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/ https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-pa...

AfterShave 5y ago

One very interesting feature of older agriculture is the way the fields were split up. With tons and tons of narrow strips of land in the open-field system. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system) In Sweden the gradual reforms towards today's uniform, or at least closely situated fields. Took as long as until the 18th century to really become a thing. I suspect similar reforms elsewhere were just as late.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

So basically this guy wants a dwarf fortress level city sim.