Civilization (video game)/Headscratchers

• In II, Fundamentalism is the result of scientific research.
  • Seems reasonable enough; for example, creationism as a political position would not have existed were the theory of evolution not to have come into existence.
  • Also, most "scientific research" in Civ is not "science" in a "scientific method" way. And Fundamentalism is not non-knowledge; while they are mostly spread violently, fundamentalist belief-systems are still the result of intellectual work. A bad theory is still a result from (bad) research, right?

• In 4, the British unique unit is "Redcoat", an upgraded rifleman (Rifleman meaning a solider with a rifled firearm, as opposed to a musket.). Is this a Critical Research Failure or just an attempt to add more variety in what a unique unit replaces?
  • I think it's more just because the 'Rifleman' unit is usually used to represent 18th/19th century gunpowder-based soldiers in general (like the Infantry unit is used to represent early-mid 20th century infantry as a whole despite looking like a WW II era American soldier), and the Redcoat is the iconic representation of British infantry of this era; it's more like one of the Acceptable Breaks From Reality the game makes, I'd say.
    • Did Not Do the Research: The Red Coat was in use pretty much until the turn of the 20th century, including in wars where the British most definitively had toys like Rifled firearms amongst other things. As an example: the British armies that smashed the Tsar's armies on the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, the Zulu, and the Madhist Empire were all Redcoats.
• It just bugs me that Baba Yetu, from '05, is nominated for an '11 Grammy.
  • Awesome that it WON, though.
  • Only after they ignored the fact that it was from a game...
    • Its one more step towards games being respected as artistic medium.
• In the Space Victory cinematic in 4, as the person is looking out of the spaceship's viewport, a meteorite (more popularly known as shooting star) or two can be seen. This bugs me because meteorites only light up like that when travelling through an atmosphere, and the spaceship is, you know, in space. Without an atmosphere. Small, but annoying nonetheless.
  • Maybe they're comets?
• Is anyone else bemused by how Christianity or Islam are almost NEVER is the religion of the dominant world powers? Polytheism (represented by Hinduism) and Buddhism are almost inevitably the dominant religions of any Civ IV game thanks to being discovered (and spread) first. By the time later religions come along, it takes way too much effort to convert people to them, and it's actively a bad idea since most rival nations have settled on the first 2-3 religions.
  • The religion mechanic is wonky at best because of cultural considerations, and we should leave it at that.
    • There are mods that alter the religion mechanic to actually give special bonuses to various religions, specifically to balance out the time difference. The game designers just figured it would avoid a whole lot of problems if they made all religions equal and minimized their effects.
  • What's really weird is that Polytheism and Buddhism are always discovered first (assuming that's the case). Everything else happens randomly with no regard to actual history.
    • Not necessarily. I was just playing (albeit with a mod) and discovered, in order, Khmeticism, Hinduism, Hellenism, Buddhism and Christianity. ...wait, ok, yeah, that's weird. I mean, others were totally discovered by other people, but the first things I discovered were four types of polytheism and Buddhism.
  • Even without mods the game has the "choose religions" option that allows you to select the religion you found instead of getting one associated with a tech. The AI in this case chooses the "favourite religion" of its leader. This usually results in a more varied and less predictable set of religions, although there's a slight emphasis on Christianity, then, since most leaders are from European religion and many of the early founders (like Isabella and Justinian) prefer Christianity.
• What is the point of building ironclads in 5? They're a dead-end unit with no lead-ins and no upgrades. There was no reason they couldn't have a frigate upgrade to an ironclad, which then upgrades to a destroyer. Yes, the ironclads in the game can only move in coastal waters, but that is not the case of all ironclads in Real Life. Yes, the American audience associates ironclads with the Monitor (used in 3) and the Virginia (used in 4 and 5), and those couldn't handle oceans. But there's no reason they couldn't use the British Warrior-class ironclads as examples, which were ocean-going. While playing, this troper specifically avoids building units that cannot be upgraded and will become useless in later periods, such as scouts and the above-mentioned ironclads. Thankfully, there are mods to fix this oversight.
  • the idea should be that non-upgradable units and buildings bring your civ more bang for the buck while they're relevant. Not saying that Ironclads follow this though.
  • Ironclads were patched to upgrade to battleship AFAIK.
  • They also changed the look of the ironclads in a patch.
• Why do resources like pig and crab provide food bonuses to civs with Judaism or Islam? Or cow for Hinduism?
  • Dang, that would actually work well for gameplay too, having some resources that are forbidden or particularly good to a religion, forcing the player to decide whether the resource or the religion is more important, and (for the "good" resources) making resource trading (to use an overly-friendly word) between religious rivals more tempting.
  • You can do things with pigs and cows other than eat them or turn them into clothing. Perhaps these religions get a bonus because the surplus allows them to increase trade output? More trade income = more goat burgers and stuff.
  • Hindus use cows for milk (in fact, milk is actually a necessary part of various religious ceremonies; besides, fresh milk tastes good).
  • Maybe they're reform Jews...
  • It's pretty obvious that the religions in Civ 4 are meant to be Cosmetically Different Sides of sorts, so they avoided drawbacks for Judaism and Islam as an Acceptable Break From Reality.
• How exactly does making the United Nations lead to a victory, not trying to insult the United Nations, but they aren't that powerful.
  • Cultural is even better; three highly cultured cities and you win (although, unlike Diplomatic, it doesn't explicitly make you world leader, just the winner of the game).
  • The victory isn't making the United Nations, but rather getting elected leader of the world. I guess the idea is that the UN isn't that powerful, but the combined power of the nations that vote you in are.
    • For all intents and purposes, when you get so elected in the Diplomatic Victory, you've turned the UN into a true One World Government, under your iron (or velvet) fist.
  • It's simply a simplified representation of power through diplomatic and cultural hegemony rather than military force; sort of like how in real life, the United States achieved global superpower status not just because of a massive military presence (although it does have that) but how it's traditionally been able and willing to exert a lot of diplomatic power over other nations without even needing to really enforce that military power. Similarly, American cultural power comes from the fact that millions of people around the world watch American movies and TV programs, listen to American music, read American books, and so forth -- and in doing so, are exposed to a lot of American ideas, where conversely their own native culture might not wield the same influence either over America or their own citizens. Within the game, you are recognized as so powerful and influential that your diplomatic skills can convince your rivals to do anything (such as, say, all but elect you as the leader of the world, essentially), and / or that your nation's cultural products influence the entire world.
  • Also, the real United Nations are not very powerful because the nations in it disagree a lot. When you've won the diplomatic victory, you've made sure they did.
• Why do railroads make units move x times faster? Well yeah, they could've taken the train but... why do tanks and cavalry ride faster trains than infantry?
  • The military uses specially equipped trains for armored vehicle transport when airlifts are not possible. Most of the time they're disassembled on the way and reassembled back.
  • This one actually makes a little more sense in the older games, where the range of any unit is only bound by the length of track itself. Sure, effectively infinite movement isn't balanced, but at least it's relatively consistent.
• Okay, I understand that it's part of Acceptable Breaks From Reality to give each nation a recognizable face for the player, but... how do you justify leaders being immortal?

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