Civilization Indicators / Quality of Life

[DylPickle]

I started playing a little game called Anno 1701 recently. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it, but for those who aren't it's a sort of settlement management/builder game based around colonization of islands. In order for your colonies to go up levels, you need to secure for them access to certain resources. Initially pioneers need simple things like food, shelter, community and faith. Once they have this available to them, the "pioneers" are upgraded to proper "settlers," who then need to gain access to textiles and alcohol. Further levels require things like lamp oil, entertainment, and delicacies.
Essentially it's an obvious scale that slants up from basic necessities to unnecessary luxuries.

While I definitely don't think anything like this should be coded into the game, I am curious to know if anyone plays with a concept of a "civilization level" in the back of their mind? I've noticed that in most of the "Best Town" threads, the majority seem to pick their favourite communities based off of the available RP (seemingly Relationship-Playing more than Role-Playing sometimes ).
Personally, my characters all have at least a bit of inherent materialism in their personalities, and I've made little behind the scenes lists for my most recent ones with different stages of necessities that could be satisfied for them to feel better about themselves, in a similar fashion to the Anno games, but more cantr-ized. These aren't all material either. Varieties of culture, law, community, and belief systems are in there too.

Anybody else play with any semblance of this style? Discuss generally.

[Hedgedhogst]

Hehe, as far as I'm concerned, if it's in arms reach of iron, it's THE place to be. I have two characters in deep forest. One of them are totally alone without walking through three towns first. Having said that, there's definately some quality when you consider that he's far from car fumes, workshop noise and serial rapists... And he's living off of fresh meat, NOT potatoes. That, by far, makes up for the fact that the meat is cooked with excretion. Oh, and he has eggs and milk, and you don't!
I do have great recollections of the original Anno. I got a bunch of lamp oil and shipped it to my mainland. They all evolved and adjusted, then ran out earlier than expected, devolved and pretty much tore everything to shreds. Ah, the good old days.

[Snickie]

Somebody with the power to do so, please move this to Non-Forum Games and delete this post.

[madfish]

Somebody with the power to do so, please move this to Non-Forum Games and delete this post.

Why? I think the video game reference was to help explain what he meant by the question: "I am curious to know if anyone plays with a concept of a "civilization level" in the back of their mind?"

[Snickie]

Maybe next time I should read the entire post before posting that. I figured that since Dyl spent an entire paragraph describing the video game that the rest of the post would be something like comparing it to Cantr. The second paragraph wasn't completely clear as to whether or not he was talking about Cantr or Anno (especially since I've never even heard of Anno 1701).

[Alladinsane]

I usually have a set of generalized goals for each char and they have to be adjusted based on the spawning environment. Sometimes you spawn into a town that already has all of the trade goods you could want and if the leaders are wakeful enough, you can usually earn them. I always stick to the philosophy prevalent in most Americans: "What it will take to make me happy is just a /little/ bit more than I have right now". Usually when people run out of the material goals, they have no choice but to seek RP (role/relationship, I liked that coinage dyl) or sleep out.

Sometimes you seek the RP first which is what I generally do. The most challenging part of this game is interacting with other humans. Whether it is the clever (sometimes) mind games of flirtation or dealing with the personality quirks of some chars, that is really what makes this game have variety. Building things and acquiring resources seems mostly systematic to me with the only real variation being in geography to some degree. But if you ain't the lead dog, the view never changes and so I find it hard to continually depend on those who run trade routes or lesser towns to stay active enough to fulfill the demands I want to create. Can't blame them to some degree (back to the lead dog comment). Still I think you have touched on something innate there and once the goals have run out, the reasons to keep logging on become a bit less numerous. Its the thrill of the chase over the kill in cantr2, at least in my limited experience.

be well.

[Addicted]

I started as a simmer really. The game mechanics had me hooked. I learned to roleplay (whether I learned enough or not?) while improving towns and my own characters. I had played a range of games but loved the bulding civilization ones and the 'adventure style' fighting, questing games of my youth. Cantr had all these elements and more. I had characters in basic, primitive places and they struggled to survive. I particularly enjoyed these when new. I have helped build and improve towns, and wasn't so interested in my own ones wealth as in the area's development. I am now frustrated at the limitations on further development in these places, often stuck at primitive for a few game related reasons. People get fed up with the lack of progress or the slowness and move on to other more 'active' and wealthy places. With this interest in cantr
alone, as my characters got the wealth or the towns progress stagnated I would have stopped playing.

I spawned some in towns with a few different society models and these intrigued me. The coments already on the forum reguarding governments model and power struggles cover this quite well, suffice to say I enjoyed the evolution of these systems. Again, I now find less models work in the game structure then I initially had imagined. And I have been there and tried that and now what?

Then the third and unexpected part of cantr was the other characters. Wow, the story lines I've seen and helped write have been my reason for playing for the past year. I might not be the best at this aspect, some of you are far more talented, but I love the way this game shapes and develops my characters. I laugh and cry and get teased by my kids. So now I play a little less selfishly. My leaders can enable others and help them on but I do wonder if this is best so many don't take this up. Conflict is the key I think for many to engage in this game. So I need to look at this a little more and sent some in different directions.