Could anyone actually make a historically-grounded prehistoric 4X game that wouldn't be boring?
I could see it pretty easily, to be honest. Like, we obviously have the most singularly limited insights into human prehistory possible, what with the whole obvious "hmm, not much of any help
survives 30'000+ or so years, especially with zero writing", but even archaeological insight shows that we were not like, just dumb barely above apes in the
old times of humanity.
Like I was
very specific with that number of 30'000 years ago, because there are bodies, specifically
Sunghir-1, in Russia from that long ago with some
staggeringly complex jewelry that require mind boggling amounts of centralized effort and time to have even considered doing, let alone actually having, and archaeological evidence around that area suggesting they had 'forts'.
In all likelihood, it was
seasonal, and to be clear I'm not suggesting here some, wild ass pseudo-archaeology of "
HYPERBOREA, THE LOST CIVILIZATIONS, A BURNING AGE OF GREAT TEMPLES, FORGOTTEN SECRETS OF METALURGY, THE ALL-SUPERPOWERFUL SUPERHUMANS" or some nonsense, but like, those peoples were a
lot more advanced than pop culture, or pop archaeology likes to suggest. Historically accurate is literally incompatible with "uhhhh, they wore. Animal prints. I Guess.", or hell, even some of what pop culture usually tries to show off as 'accurate' (I', looking at you, Far Cry Primal, with ya weird ass D&D DMs First Progress Vs Druidism Plot). Like the oldest most totted around earliest human language we have, Proto-Indo European, the default "oh that's the
old shit, the progenitor to
everything we know nowadays", that's the vaguest of broad strokes of an educated guess as to what people north of Babylon were saying at the same time. The depths of human history and complexity are wild in a way genuinely difficult to grasp and which we obviously do not have a perfect picture of, but you can still do lots with that.
Like, to speak from a gameplay perspective? Easy as fuck to make a historically accurate 4x title that could fit into what humans were probably like, and make some compelling storywork. Sure, we don't have exact crop agriculture down, but exploiting the natural landscape, ambiently cultivating the terrain to our needs, mutating maize from something you wouldn't even be able to want to try and bite off a stem into
the super staple crop of two continents and that applying to other fruits and vegetables? Migratory patterns of pursuit and hunting, trying to strike the balance from season ti season, the semi-permanent homes and all-powerful trade networks that
will be powerfully maintained to help support the highly revered great elders we shall dress in the finest of bone and ochre and hunted beasts, laid to rest under the earth in mighty scraped out tombs? The
birth of medicine, or hell, to go from finding wolves as great dangers to be avoided or kept at wary distance to personal protector and killer? The eventual shift to control
oxen?
That kind of enb and flow is the shit of the most addicting of gameplay loops.
And I Can Bet Your Ass The Paradox Game Will Have Maybe Only A Quarter Of It, because again, proto-idigenous-european is the usual go to in "We are the historically
accurate ice age game" even though that language is more distant from 30'000 years ago than it is distant from now, or the fact the art is people in fucking animal pelt togas (although the sign of like. Actual proper structures that aren't
just crude tents is a plus) and that's kind of an unavoidable issue because we are discussing lengths of time genuinely impossible to conceptualize in a meaningful level, but
still. There's definitely
something there. I just question how well Paradox can achieve it.
The one plus side to this is that, worst come to worst, the Paradox Interactive woe of "I have declared war in you, I have slaughtered your armies to a last, I have pillaged your capital, I have killed and killed and destroyed without fault and fail,
what do you MEAN YOU STILL HAVE THIS FUCKING HIGH A MORALE AND WON'T SPLINTER OR GIVE UP ALREADY!?" would make sense in a context of "Oh that was just
the seasonal place, that was their depository, they're still on the go, they still got a whole everything to escape into, this is gonna
draaaaaag".
Can you guess that I really really really do not like how Crusaders King 3 or Stellaris handle warfare?
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