Why are historical strategy games so inaccurate? | A critique from the left
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2022
- How historically accurate are our favorite historical 4x and grand strategy games? I analyze Anno 1800, the Civilization games, and Crusader Kings III from the left.
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/ qualiaredux - Hry
I actually love the brutality of the ck3 when they coldly have traits like homely ugly and hideous
Yep nice features
disabilities were huge disadvantages in medieval times......
Haha, I am blind in one eye and this made me chuckle.
Exactly what I thought 😂😂
that is so true
Well definitely Ck3 has some inaccuracies but a pure blooded trait is not a "historical" inaccuracy really.
Actually there are so many accurate details in the game that it's really hard to use the word inaccurate for the whole game. I personally live in Isfahan (a city in iran) and there is a city which i originally come from called Shahreza created by seljuks with the old name of Qomsheh. In ck2 you could see this town being built in a historical accurate date. (In ck3 they made a whole county out of it called Quimisha which is weird but ok) and they even created the part when luri culture diverge from Persian culture which is pretty accurate and i don't believe so many people around the world notice these things. You can find these details in everywhere even in india and Europe. What I'm trying to say is that they even paid attention to minor details like this which people does not really care but to be honest this is one of the main reasons i love ck3. A detailed and maybe the most historically accurate game ever made.
One thing you didn't touch upon (though I don't blame you for it) is how historical strategy games contrasts with sci-fi strategy games. Aside from technology, the main difference I've seen, is that sci-fi strategy games are a lot more blunt and honest about the inclusion and depiction of atrocities. Whereas games like civ and ck try to abstract the problematic elements as much as possible, you have e.g. stellaris, where it's not only possible to commit chattel slavery and genocide at a mass scale, the game is not afraid to show you the consequences of such actions. Another example is sid meier's alpha centauri, where you can basically lobotomize your citizens if they get too cranky, but if you do it, your opponents will call you out on your blatant violations of human rights and declare a coalition war on you
CK2 had a mod dedicated to Genocide. Idk about CK3 though.
The modding community (which is pretty good in strat games) can fix most of the downfalls the video listed.
Historical engagement. That's what these games aim for, and when done right, the target audience eats it up. Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis drown the player in historical engagement: the opening map throws 'another world' at you, one you can fully explore over time. And as in-game time goes by, the games throw even more history at you. Religions, cultures, people(s), and events: from creating narratives that you, the player, can use to immerse yourself and set gameplay goals with, they also create a historical backdrop that enriches the experience simply by granting it an air of legitimacy. This was real, in one way or another, and now it is for you to explore it and perhaps, use it.
It's also in using historical engagement that the creator takes on the burden of educational responsibility. Some studios do this better than others, but in general, 'these' games are getting better and better at it with every generation of games we're getting. Compare Sid Meier's Colonization to a more recent take on 'such a game', and this becomes painfully obvious. On the other hand, a game like Civ2 from the 90s already embraces global warming (now, climate change) and uses the game and its gameplay to educate its audience.
Anyway, I think the goal of historical accuracy is an extension of a game's attempt at creating historical engagement, and that was the point I was trying to make!
An excellent point!
@@QualiaRedux Also, I liked the video!
CK3 is full of historically inaccuracies like lack of religious institutions and lack of council and integrity, your allies or vassals lacks loyalty and refusal to negotiate or force them to submission on them
Just so you know, hundreds of hours in a strategy game (especially the ones from paradox) is entry-level :P. When you reach a thousand hours you'd be considered a casual player, seasoned by 2000-3000.
You're not wrong, haha
Your video randomly popped up in my recommendations. I don't what's crusader Kings but your video convinced me to play it lol.
You should! It's great!
Not gonna lie, feels kinda awkward to watch this after playing some Age of Empire III: Definitive Edition...that series DEFINITELY glosses over a lot of history, and absolutely follows that model you described for the Civ games: an emphasis on competition and violence that isn't really accurate to how things actually shook out, while at the same time sanitizing the very real horrors of colonialism and imperialism's heyday...as just one example, I can *definitely* remember the "Estate" building (a farm-like building that generates the Coin resource as opposed to Food) and its symbol was very clearly a cotton plant in the original version, but in the Definitive Edition it's a more generic pile of coins for reasons that should be VERY obvious...
Ooooh! Oh NO, hahaha.
I think no game is perfect, and I don't expect them to be-- like, whatever you choose your focus to be, you're going to end up omitting things. But the cotton thing feels like it goes beyond scope limitations and is an unforced error, for sure.
@@QualiaRedux I should clarify, I think that adjustment was a good one because even back in the old version I was like "Wait, *cotton* for a coin-generating building. That's MORE than a little iffy." Same with changes they made to the game's Indigenous cultures (switching out the names of the "Iroquois" and "Sioux" for the more respectful "Haudenosaunee" and "Lakota"). It's good that they were at least trying to deal with their mistakes instead of just ignoring them.
But you're right, some degree of sanitation is inevitable in games like these, if only through the abstraction necessary to make a GAME out of it. It'd be pretty damn messed-up if the game had two separate "villager" units to represent freed people and slaves, so they're all just generic townsfolky people who don't have needs beyond the 100 Food resource you pay to create them...
@@zoushaomenohu Oh, no worries, I got your meaning lol
@@zoushaomenohu you're right about the Haudenosuanee, but I should point out that Lakota isn't an appropriate replacement term for everyone called Sioux, since there's the other big sub-group of Sioux people, separate from the Lakota: the Dakota.
@@UnfortunatelyTheHunger This is a fair point. While it was a step in the right direction, it was only a baby step.
The ‘eugenics’ gameplay doesn’t really play any real factors in the game, positive congenital traits, while useful aren’t anything special. For the most part I just marry my character to peasants with max stewardship, while my children are used to form alliances and unless your specifically marrying the same 2 countries over and over again its pretty easy to have strong alliances while marrying your children off to at most distant relatives. As for negative traits, the games treats them as how they would be treated in that era, and you yourself criticized the other games for not being very accurate, and as for the pure blooded trait, noble families would inbreed for exactly that reason, to be ‘pure blooded’.
Letting all that delicious pope-flesh go unsampled for an *entire* game?! Couldn't be me.
You gotta have a little taste.
@@QualiaRedux
It's like the egg-eating song from that one Land Before Time movie, but with popes.
When it comes to CK3 you are wrong that non-European countries are represented as if they were European in terms of governance - if you go to the "Government Type" map mode you will see that Europe and the Islamic world, for instance, are represented by different government forms with only Europe (and India, I guess) being "Feudal". If anything the least accurately portrayed country in the game in this regard is the Byzantine Empire that did not have feudal subjects, but a Roman-like province system organized through the military without inheritable titles.
In CK2 you can play as republics, and maybe landed clergy too, but this was added in expansions there and likely will be here too. The fact it is not added yet in CK3 should be seen as a sign Paradox plans to do the representation of those justice. I wish unlanded characters like mercenaries or nobility with claims, but no holdings, would be playable too, but that will probably not happen for the forseeable future and might be possible to add through mods if you are a bit clever.
CK3 seeks to fulfill a somewhat exaggerated historical role play within relatively realistic confines, but it will sacrifice some realism to pave the way for more play styles, and replayability and this is part of what makes the game, and other Paradox games, so good. While you can critique some missing parts Paradox games are so far ahead of any competitor when it comes to historical accuracy, especially if you are willing to use some mods, that it is almost unfair to compare them or critique them next to their competitors. No other game study is even close to being close.
Concerning Crusader Kings III and its worst historical inaccuracy. The primary purpose of that game is being a simulator of the medieval feudal system. And, unfortunately, the most important, the main thing - the system of feudal vassal military service is structured wrongly in the game.
7:45 we do actually now know how the romans made their superior concrete. seawater was the secret ingredient. Great video, really enjoyed it.
While it is true we do know the basic ingredients and the theory behind it, we definitely don’t know the recipe and haven’t been able to replicate it! Which would have been too wordy for the video, haha.
(also, you are a worthwhile human being)
Hey! This was represented in Impervm Civitas 3! Brick-shops produce more bricks near rivers or seas! :))
Lol i came here to say this
16:20 Cleopatra could be seen as a counterexample, but like, the one counterexample in all of human history.
Also, Anno 1800 is just the most recent instalment in the Anno series, which all revolve around the same core mechanic of colonising uninhabited islands and exploiting their resources to support your central island. I used to love them as a kid, but looking back, they sure did paint a very rose-coloured picture of colonialism.
Lord, yes re: Cleopatra.
I like Anno 1800 a lot as a game, for sure (and would probably enjoy other Anno games). It's pretty! It's fun! But yeah, very rosy on colonialism, haha.
Sim Genocide? Stellaris already exists
I have OCD and I get way too anxious trying to play these kinds of games while knowing that I am not playing optimally. I’m glad you’re able to enjoy them so much.
Oh, I could see how that would be a problem. I am driven to perfectionism in a "I will do that better next time" way, but not to distraction!
Your OCD will getting worse after seeing border gore in paradox's games.
Just discovered your channel through this video, and I'm subscribing.
As a person who has invested a lot of time into Crusader Kings 3 and Anno 1800 as well as other games like Europa Universalis 4, I really appreciated your critique of these types of games. It's clear to see it comes from a place of love and a wish for improvement and that always makes for the best informed and therefore best quality critiques.
As a person I don't consider myself very far to the left and sometimes that's because I perceive some farther down to reject the science and objective reasoning that goes into discovering, recording, and retelling history (though I know that may be unjustified prejudice on my part). I think the discourse you bring to the table by showing the historical flaws these games present, if they are taken as "historical-economic simulators", reminds me that the real and historical systems they do treat as game mechanics are more nuanced and had real and deep social and political consequences. I think it opens my mind to listening to a wider plurality of political thought especially when it comes to the big and scary topics of colonialism and capitalism.
Responding to your last section, at least when it comes to Crusader Kings, it's often described as a "Grand Strategy" game, which I think is more accurate to what it is and avoids the fallacies it may incur if it does claim to be a retelling or accurate alternative history game (and as a player I know that there are MANY fallacies which can occur). Then again, I often describe Anno 1800 as a microeconomic simulator or a logistics game, so I know the validity behind that final statement.
Well, I appreciate it, and I do hear you on the very soft reasoning some liberals have. I'm not much into woo! I think conservatives have their own foibles that are even less appealing to me, but that's a topic for another time. Thanks for watching!
@@QualiaRedux they definitely do, conservatives that is. Couldn’t be me, if I came off as coming from the right, that’s not me.
interesting perspective, I don't fully agree I say this as a pretty far left person. But gameplay always takes precedent before accuracy. I often prefer the term "authentic" not accurate. You can have a authentic war game but not an accurate one. If games were ever 100% accurate to real life they would be time consuming and not fun to play
Excellent video, as usual! You provided a thoughtful but fond critique of a class of games that often end up reinforcing or supplementing history education in not great ways. They’re also some of my enduring favorites, but they could do better.
Also, this may be apocryphal, but I remember hearing that Gandhi’s readiness with nukes in earlier Civ games was actually a bug that was so popular, they decided to leave it in place. He was supposed to have the highest level of reluctance to nuke, and they accidentally gave him the lowest.
I was definitely one of those kids who found it hilarious that I got nuked by a notorious pacifist.
It's MEMORABLE when he nukes you, yes hahaha.
I think every work has its limitations, so it's often a matter of a developer choosing which limitations a game is gonna have. Here's hoping future games have some different (and interesting) ones!
Looking at the wiki page, it's kinda disappointing: Sid Meier himself claims it never happened, and other interviewed devs are basically like "There might have been an issue with Gandhi, but I can't remember." The general consensus seems to be the bug is an urban legend that became such a meme that they used it in later games intentionally.
Your Twitter thread yesterday on Medieval peasant culture made this an instant Patreonize.
It's always been a little interesting playing strategy games, and especially Paradox Interactive titles, from the left and yet I've spent months of my 20s in them - CK2, Civ 5, Stellaris, Europa Universalis IV, and I'm looking forward to the potential for some of the sorts of more.... counter-dominant games you hypothesize, some day, maybe.
Thank you so much for becoming a patron!!
i’ve never played these before but were always intrigued by them and had gathered there would be some interesting sociopolitical dynamics within the game and outside of it
do you think these would work better if they were just made in fantasy or sci-fi worlds? i’ve gotten into the board game twilight imperium and was like, i think it feels less troubling when they’re not trying to recreate like european powers dominating the global south for example
I was gonna disagree with your video just before the end of the video. This discussion is really interesting and should be happening. It is really important to note that these games focus on delivering an experience more than an accurate recounting of what happened historically.
here's your "media literacy" folks it's a goddamn video it has to balance enjoyment with accuracy
I've played a lot of ck3 and murdered lots of children and babies as demented and questionable as that sounds.. but I only learn today that you can split a baby in two or cannibalize the pope. Also it's super interesting about the "wink" with the 'possessed' trait. It's ingenious how you can believe it is supernatural or not and it works either way
These games are not for me, but I really enjoyed this video regardless. High quality edutainment. Love your background sloth.
I can see them not being for everyone, but I'm glad you got something from the video! Thanks for watching!
I love crusader kings and eu4, but both are power fantasies first, historical simulation second. There is something reveling about being a victorious crusader with genius/strong traits marching into Jerusalem because we fantasize about the sense of elation that must come with conquistadorial glory. Or torturing a nun because doing things profane is a power trip. Or securing a massive colonial empire raking in thousands of ducats to the metropole from distant colonies in Sumatra and Mexico is a way to feel the sense of national glory, perhaps glory that was historically denied to your homeland in real life.
The problem, of course, is that these games encourage us to identify with the ruling powers, whether it be the medieval crusaders in ck or the amorphous state-bureaucratic-nation-state machinery in eu4. We do not pause to think that the extraction of crusading glory, profane debauchery, or national expansion came at the cost of real people, whose lives were absolutely ruined. These real people include not just the obvious examples of Muslims in the holy land to colonized subjects in the New World, but to the random peasants in your land who would now have to go fight in a pointless war because you built that conscription center, which ups manpower by +1,000. We do not think that the conscription center building is an agent of state violence that is tearing apart a peasant's family, but as just another module to augment your national glory.
Perhaps it is historically accurate on some level that growing state bureaucracy in the early modern period led to greater state intrusion into the provinces, which were ruthlessly exploited for their resources and manpower. But, to borrow your term, perhaps an anthropologically insightful game would center the gameplay on the sheer cost of your national adventurism on the every day people who make up your country, who have to bear the blunt of your conquistadorial vision. I think Paradox's upcoming Victoria 3 is moving in this direction by focusing the story on pops, ie. the people who make up your empire, and their desires and wants.
Oh, cool! I'm looking forward to Victoria 3, then!
I think while many other entertainment platforms have gone with a more progressive undertone, historical map games, however, are more conservative or with fewer sensitivities in comparison to other platforms. In a way they allow the imagination to flourish with less IRL political sensitivities.
I like it like that. I want historical authenticity and accuracy within reason eu4 without slavery would be inappropriate and white washing history (tho they could go into more detail with that but I think the trade system could be more fleshed out). Or ck 3 without holy wars and policaly driven "family intimacy" 😉
Great video! Just subscribed
Thank you so much!
good discourse! love to see it
Interesting vid! 🙌
Thanks so much for watching!
Great video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
The technology component of civilization is actually accurate to how the real world functions. Nations used technology to conquer others and a significant enough gap ensured success.
Civilization also simulates well enough that getting a tech is not enough by itself. If I discover the tech that unlocks tanks, it doesn't mean that I can stomp everyone immediately but if I also have the production capacity I could enjoy (or decide not to) the new capability to expand.
Tech advantage in civ is also not only in weapons but a societal or economic advantage - higher production efficiency or income can win a war.
In real-life history it was frequently so and the weak were trampled by the strong. The concepts of legitimacy are relatively new (they started in the Westphalian system or somewhat earlier under influence of the church) and neither Alexander, Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan had any compunction in using their superior weapons or tactics for large conquests.
This is not unique to whites or Europeans. Non-white empires also used might is right.
im not getting those 20min back thx for that
You watched all the way to the end and then spent time commenting, so sounds like a “you” problem. 😊
@@QualiaRedux it very much is im just letting u know that ur problems with the games are idiotic (seems they are "you" problems). Also to comment on something i think that u have to watch everything. Also ur tital is a bit misleading...
Thanks for making this :)
I like your video.
Thanks!
Do you play Stellaris? I like playing stellaris and being all diplomatic and making federations but when I played online through a discord people were gross and only called me woman and refused to call me my name.
I checked out the reddit and it’s so much hyper-aggressive gross stuff about purging(genocide), slavery and being mean to people who wanna play in a pacifist way.
I asked my girlfriend then and she said that grand strategy games have lots of really right wing players and to avoid them and just play single player and it makes me sad…
There’s a game called Niche about evolution which I think does the trait system quite wells
Ha, I got some pushback in the comments from right-wingers here. I am not sure I enjoy the visual aesthetics of space very much, so I don’t usually play sci fi 4x games!
Right-wingers? What the fuck are you talking about? There's nothing political about the Stellaris fanbase in the slightest. Having a space empire that owns slaves and genocides xenos is just roleplay. And it's just a meme.
Leftists are so stuck up and sensitive.
This is sad, im quite right when it comes to politics but sadly yes, there is a huge number of "radical" rights in the community.
Civ and Anno are to sanatized for me. Ck2's brother eu4 has slaves but no slave revolts or colonial development.
Id like hard bone biting realism but civ6 is a good other side of the coin.
Civ 6 is to unrealistic its why I prefer eu4 and ck2/3. Tho eu4 could be better
pure-blooded trait is a joke trait
CZcams leftists try not to turn everything into a cringey video essay challenge (impossible)
And you watched it, so
LOL REAL
@QualiaRedux to be honest neither of you are wrong (yes I've watched it not to bad a video)
7:20 This reminds me of a short story called “The Road Not Taken” by Harry Turtledove. It’s about an alien civilization that evolved their technology in a radically different way that tries to invade Earth. We’re talking FTL travel and fuckin MUSKETS. Wild
I have never simultaneously agreed and disagreed with a video as much as this one. You get a lot of the *matter* right- pretty much all of it, actually- but your assessments of them seem a little off. Almost like you assess some things as mistakes that were the complete point of the game design.
With ANNO 1800- you say the representation of colonialism and capitalism is bad because those things are bad, but I think the representation of them in the game is actually GOOD because those things are bad. Sorta the same thing with the Civ games (though I’ve admittedly only played CivRev so I don’t even think I count)- the only way to “win” these games, with “winning” meaning creating a legendary and *historically memorable* civilization, is to be a colonial power and to subjugate innocent foreigners with your iron fist. This isn’t a morally good thing (believe me, I know 🇵🇭), but if you want to be remembered, you gotta conquer and assimilate. Almost all of the most famous people in human history are generals or emperors (Caesar, Napoleon, Washington, Muhammad, Temujin… the only exception is Jesus, i guess), and all the most remembered nations were/are conquering ones (Rome, Mongolia, Carthage, USA, Germany). Where you see a reinforcement of a colonialist mindset, I see an intriguing commentary on what we, as human beings, choose to glorify. Far more people can name Andrew Jackson than can name Halleck Tustenuggee, a Seminole chief who resisted the Trail of Tears. Common historical knowledge has essentially forgotten the five tribes on the trail (and also the fact that they took thousands of slaves with them). I would say that means Jackson won. Was that the intent of these games? I can’t say, I didn’t make them. But I think it’s worth considering if these “flaws” you point out may actually be completely conscious and intentional features, meant to draw attention to how, as previously mentioned, human beings choose who to enshrine in the history books.
CK3 is the game I have played the most here (1k+ hours), and I think I agree with you most here. Again, though, I don’t think the negative presentation of traits like “albino”, “dwarf”, etc. is the problem you present it as. The immense negative connotation is not the games saying the people with these disabilities are inferior today, but that this is how they were perceived in medieval times- which is completely true! People with physical disabilities were near-constantly mistreated, and some of the flavor text implies that the “possessed” and “lunatic” traits are just medieval perceptions of mental conditions. I don’t see how it’s bad to have those presentations be accurate in a game that does so much else accurate. I actually wrote an essay for my Hispanic Civ class in college back in the fall about the shortcomings of the game’s presentation of Iberia, only for Paradox to release a massive update to the region! (…just for fans to immediately beg for the struggle mechanic to be added to England so that they can enjoy the mechanic without all those brown people with Spanish/Arabic names around -_-). They’ve clearly heavily prioritized this aspect, and I think their presentations of physical/mental conditions is another excellent feature of that.
The inbreeding, though… yeah I’m with you on that. I am very proud of the fact that I have gotten every achievement in CK3 EXCEPT for the ones related to inbreeding. One of them requires you to be very careful to avoid it, which really highlights how the game kinda steers the player towards it. The first recommendation when looking for a marriage is often a relative by the time you hit 1150 AD, so it’s clearly something CK3 expects players to do. I do think it’s necessary to have the incest mechanic present (King Alfonso and Countess Urraca, for example), but the game really should not do the whole “pure-blooded” thing. Total farce.
FOOTNOTE: parts of this video reinforce a narrative I have seen pop up across newer museum write-ups, books, journal articles, video essays, etc. written by white authors, and as a Filipino/Tejano, it always bugs me. There’s this pervasive idea that the colonial powers are these powerful, warlike nations that should be kind and caring to the innocent little helpless tribes. But the truth is, the nations that existed before the arrival of colonial powers in Texas and the Philippines were not helpless. They were weaker militarily and technologically often, yes, and were susceptible to foreign disease, but when there were no colonial powers, we fought each other. And were good at it. These peoples were not all kumbaya, they were warriors. And in attempting to condemn colonialism, white westerners often end up infantilizing the peoples they are supposedly trying to defend.
I suppose you can choose to interpret CIV that way, but I don’t think it’s supported by the text of the game! Also, I am absolutely certain I made no comment about the character of indigenous people because it’s not particularly relevant to the fact the colonial powers enslaved indigenous people and committed several genocides.
Loved the video, agree about the politics and the history. Very interesting observations about Anno, which is a game series which I grew up with and never thought about critically. But I disagree about inbreeding.
Inbreeding is more complicated than that. For example, inbreeding is the basis of all dog breeds. Many of those have very significant disadvantages, the inbreeding can lead to many health problems and reduced fertility, but still, you can select for specific traits more effectively and you can increase the likelihood of expressing any recessive traits, not just the bad ones. To quote wikipedia:
"Despite all its disadvantages, inbreeding can also have a variety of advantages, such as ensuring a child produced from the mating contains, and will pass on, a higher percentage of its mother/father's genetics, reducing the recombination load, and allowing the expression of recessive advantageous phenotypes."
There's no scientific reason to exclude humans from this rule.
Inbreeding depression is often talked about in the context of population bottlenecks. On the other extreme, there is actually something called an outbreeding depression. This isn't really relevant in modern humans, because we are all pretty similar, but there are a lot of examples of animals which would be considered different species if they weren't linked by a continuum. They can definitely suffer from this.
A very common example of problems with mismatching genes in humans is the Rhesus factor. When the mother is rhesus negative, while her child is rhesus positive she develops antibodies against the blood of her own child. The first child is usually not affected, but later pregnancies usually end in stillbirth or with major health implications for the child.
It's just unclear to me what could possibly be "desirable" in humans in the way traits in dogs are "desirable" that wouldn't lead to massive and unneeded health risks in human kids. You get into the considerable ethical problems with eugenics when you start breeding humans for specific traits. And genetics is not so straightforward, even in livestock, to know that you're definitely selecting for the traits you think you are. And that's excluding a lot of icky emotional stuff I don't really wanna get into.
@@QualiaRedux I'm not a fan of human eugenics (even though I'm from Germany, where Anno is from and has always been a big thing) or incest. I'm not even a fan of purely bred dogs. I like my "Promenadenmischung".
I just wanted to say that the small(!) likelihood of characters profiting from incest is not completely inaccurate, as I think you had stated.
The ethics of all of this, like having a human eugenics simulation in the first place, or even just breeding animals for traits in rl, were out of the scope of my nitpicking.
If I remember correctly, the game makes some interesting choices, for example the arbitrary age 16 in general but 21 or something for close family members. If realism were some absolute maxime, those age barriers would look different as well, so they obviously take into account what kind of things they think (or the law thinks?) are okay to portray in a video game. Your questions therefore seem very much legitimate. All of these choices reflect the ethics of the creators.
I just wanted to talk about genetics and the game representation from the biological standpoint, even though or maybe because you specifically stated you didn't really research that small part about inbreeding in the video.
I think that in principle the semi-random system in CK is very very simple and still somewhat accurate. Two quick characters can have a stupid child in game after all (and the other way around), it's just (unrealistically) unlikely. I agree that incest is incentivised way too much through this.
Real historism is when you die you dont play as your heir cause you dont get to respawn lol!
EU4 is my favorite historical game although the name kinda makes me uncomfortable it's one of the only few games that lets me play as my country which is Samoa a pacific nation
I mean it's because the game takes place at the beginning of the the "rise of europe" and European exploration hence the name plus former games in the series were far more eurocentric and hence the name what has stuck about as a result. Funnily enough idont think your nation was coliseum during the time span of the game tho I might be wrong. Personally as a brit I never play my own nation just because I like alt history and starting games as small and medium size nations and growing bigger
Nice video.
Many thanks!
6:14 Isn’t there different ways to win the game? Like Cultural victories?
I didn’t claim otherwise!
the cultural victory in civ5 and civ6 is all about culturally dominating everyone else. in civ4, the cultural victory was in that regard a lot less "imperialist", since it only required you got three of your cities to legendary status
@@UnfortunatelyTheHunger “culturally dominant” means attracting tourists to look at your stuff, it’s not that big of a deal from a colonising critique
I agree with you basic promise, but nearly everything else is... at best misleading.
Sim genocide... you mean RimWorld?
All jokes aside I really enjoyed the video
no sim genocide? rip stellaris
i mentioned it elsewhere already, but it is peculiar that it's a lot more common in sci-fi strategy games than it is in historical strategy games, for the player to sometimes go "wait, are we the baddies?"
I did have a few sentences, which I deleted, which did touch on Alpha Centari and how my proposed "anthropologically insightful" criteria applied to it (favorably!). Like I say, I think good games come from critiques of previous good games, and Alpha Centari answers the critiques I made of Civ. That capacity to ask "are we the baddies?" also answers my critique. I thought it was a just a little out of scope of the video and I wanted to keep it tight, so I cut it. I guess I am saying: I agree!
@@UnfortunatelyTheHunger bro in ck3s brother hoi4 you can play as the leader of bad bad bad germany.
I always considered some of the congenital traits having popular opinion maluses are, well, those being the times, people are looking for ways to demean you, and we know how they treated people with divergent physiologies. I dont think they have any negatives that would denote actual ability loss (maybe prowess at most and only for a few) but if they do, it is unacceptable. Names as well can be a bit problematic, but by in large they are using medieval names for it. Let's just say I am glad they dont have a hysterical trait, but maybe adding a "humors" system instead of congenital traits like you always end up trying to breed the ubermench would have been more immersive and balanced maybe.
Incest is iffy part of the game but hey you are nobility, I think it shows why people with landed titles inbred so much. There are only so many ways you can concentrate titles on your family without conquest. I think it highlights how inheritance of generational wealth creates class structures that have separate rulesets from lower classes. Catholic Church had banned avunculate marriage but second and third cousins were spared because under Frankish and Salic laws Europe would have even shattered more than it actually did.
I agree though pure blooded trait and even the Bloodline legacy are pure fancy, belonging more to ASOIAF than actual history. I think it was added because CK2 had a massive Incest meme about it and it just sorta became this gameplay people expected. There are mods that remove those and make you consider the real things when finding the perfect woman - wide tracts of land.
What are your thoughts of the fact that you can have extermination camps in victoria 2, and expel minority cultures and religions in crusader kings 3, and you can capture slaves on raids also in crusader kings 3. Do you think games should allow the player to do these things?
Portrayal is not endorsement.
Realistic colonialism sim sounds fun tbh
This was delightful. You are a worthy human being, independent of the algorithm.
Well, thank you! I appreciate that!
Yikes
i am a very right leaning person. so it was pretty interesting to see what you think of it even tho i porbably disagree with it all
how did you lose your twitter
They didn't want God's Perfect Angel on the hellsite. 😔
I think you're inherently wrong about Civ6, especially about Civ6.
First, you need a standing army no matter what age you are in in order to protect your empire from barbarians (looters). If you do not have a strong enough army in order to protect yourself, it means you're either having a bad game or you got the game wrong.
Second, I love peaceful wins. It is almost impossible not to get them on the first 5 difficulties if you're playing peacefully, expanding through settlers, ruling city-states, looking for amenities, and focusing on culture. You can also go full science and keep a nice peaceful empire while going for the stars (and keeping a spy and an army to protect your spaceport). Religion victory is often mixed with domination and is oppressive if you think about it. And you didn't mention the score victory either, which is the least based on dominating others.
Third, you have no friends in Civ6, only allies. There is no peaceful civilisation, they all want to win, either through science, domination, culture, or religion, and they'll let you know it. AI will betray you (except Gilgamesh, but he'll still conquer some city-state or other civs). Some leaders even have the paranoid trait.
Fourth, you can not pollute almost at all if you're delaying your battleship/frigate/submarine upgrades and not build any oil or coal power plant. And it is fully doable as a strategy.
idk what point you're trying to make (other than "woman wrong", given the videos and channels you like)
There is literally video of me playing the game, bro. I understand it.
Oh man, I'm cringing every time you feel bad for cultures being the losing culture for having different goals or for ck3 stats. Do we really have to feel bad for some stats in a video-game? I'm a romanian and therefore you may call my culture, a loser of the history. Welp at first I thought romania is a victim of European/ Islamic colonialism. Now after I got wiser I'm sure that if my people had the necessary means, they would have taken advantage of the neighboring nations the same way we have been and still are taken advantage of.
Lol
❤
Hello! I liked the video but I didn't understand the setting of it. Is yours a critique from the left point of view (which should be technically defined as nowadays leftist view) or an accusation of not being historically accurate? Because definitely the two things do not match and they kind of exclude each other.
That's certainly an opinion you're entitled to have!
O yea thst ck3 thing is because in ck2 the ultimate gamer challange was. How incredible depraved can i make this. Whith the ultimate goals being things like "being in an affair as an emperess with the pope, who is a horse i made pope and is also my brother whonis the father of my heir and his sister who is with me in the witch cult"
Did you go this whole video without discussing the need to keep games within reasonable historically accurate bounds vs creating systems to mimic it and letting people go?
What does historically accurate mean when things like a prince dying at the wrong time stopped france and england being united, which would have probably changed europe a lot. Do you just railroad it to fall apart so that you always return to a historical looking setup or is Ryuku conquering the world in the 1700s historically accurate if only they had made the same choices?
What does it mean for Prussians to have better military ideas than Austria or for specific types of troops to be locked to a certain country, how do you deal with that stuff without essentialising people and cultures?
Theres so much to talk about here.
Nope, I am very sure I dug into that in the conclusion!
Maybe don’t play those games then
Stopped watching as soon as "trigger warnerings" was mentioned.
Well, bye.
Let's not play games that are colonism, it's not right XDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
@@bgiantmountain I definitely didn’t say that, but isn’t it interesting you heard it? You poor thing.
@purebecoming Sounds like you got triggered haha
İs that joke?
do u wanna hear my playtime to anno 1404?
Are you sure you understand the logic of Anno games? :DDDDDDDDDDD
A critique from the left XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
I'm not really sure to respond to this because it comes across as if a profoundly socially and emotionally crippled man is trying to hurt my feelings and it's just kind of weird and pathetic. I even feel kind of bad because being honest with you like this, as if you're a normal adult, might be cruelty to someone genuinely weak. But I hope you feel better and learn to be normal soon!
I don’t know how this showed up for me but i watched it anyways. Trigger warnings? Lmao I think people who need trigger warnings are going to not understand history and why it was the way it was...
I could pick this apart but just a few points.
8:41 you say that it is not correct and then do not explain why? No maybe not exactly but they do share many similarities they’re just humans as well.
Disability definition
a physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities.
Why would this give you positive traits?
These types of games are not historically accurate they’re historical sandboxes which means you play within a historical setting.
Capitalism bad lol as you sit there surrounded by material goods in one corner of your room it would be interesting to see the rest of your place.
Why do all leftist women look like you? I think there is a direct relation between how a women looks and her political opinions lmao
History may be hard for some people to understand because you don’t face the same hardships you have unlimited access to food and a comfortable home and society thanks to those terrible white colonialists capitalists lol people like you can not understand how being hungry or starving and wanting to survive can make people treat or react harshly towards each other. Life is not all rainbows and butterfly’s look at nature there is beauty in it but there is also a harshness to it and that is perfectly exemplified in human beings.
A lot going on here, hahaha.
You're trying very hard, and God bless. I'm happy to accommodate people with PTSD in my videos because they are worthwhile and have something to add. I realize some people cry about them, but they aren't worthwhile and they don't matter. Hope this helps!
Ngl your criticism is way too agressive