LETS GOOOO!!!! VS is like the perfect game for this experiment in everything but the server performance ;-; we wanted 300-1000 players which VS just wasn't gonna be able to handle if they ever got too close to each other lmaooo, but 100 seems like it could work much smoother :) Good luck man!!

though rubix raptor iiisss TECHNICALLY doing a civilization server right now, theyre just slowly ramping up the player count overtime because theyre afraid the server might explode from the mods theyre using

unlike minecraft, Every task in vintage story is very indepth meaning theres a good reason for people to actually have specific roles and jobs within a society

Vintage Story is 100 times better than MC or Ark if you want to make a civilization event. The classes, food growing system, scarcity and difficulty of finding and working metals, natural division of labour, chiseling [art] - not even starting on the mods.

Armies and amount of armor would be more realistic in VS, logistics would become very important

I've seen both the Joyful critiques and RubixRaptor's vods

And I still failed to put 2 and 2 together and realize Vintage Story's potential for growing civilizations in a server until this video 😅

Welcome to the game that does it right, been a part of a multi-Town server for a while and playing since 2021, have fun getting enough food and metal to get a small Army organized without a few shortages.

Each time I see those cool and massive “minecraft civilization” I always wish it had been in Vintage story instead

I've been on servers with like 20-50 people, and being there at the beginning and building everything up over months is so much fun! In one, we even elected a town council that I ended up being on. Health stuff has sapped my time and energy since then, but I'd love to do this with a dedicated group of friends, maybe only running the server on weekends or something.
Until then, I'm enjoying a cozy single player experience in my forever world.

I have been WAITING for someone to point this out. Heck in VS you could even easily simulate real trade due to the Ore spawning system. One nation could have an abundance of tin while another have an abundance of bismuth or iron.

This game is literally the best game for experience like this rather than some ytb with Minecraft. This game deserve more.

2:05 Don't forget! That pickaxe is useless without a hammer to break up the ore chunks!

i've watched a guy named "Rimmy Downunder" who had a server with quite a lot of people, and a lot of lag and crashes.
it functioned as a civilization pretty well imo(of two seperate towns), but indeed vs isn't just good enough yet to handle this many people.

4:15 Who is going to be the dedicated breeder?

The point you brought up at the end, about too many rules and role playing -

Vintage Story, being a fully different game, has the benefit of a full experience people can learn to play separately before the slightly modified or increased difficulty of the civilization experiment.

Regarding the role play - I think Vintage Story's realistic survival focused gameplay actually encourages role play rather than stifling it. You feel poor and desperate early on, especially on harder difficulty settings. The looming threat of winter might make a desperate town attack their neighbors with abundant food.

Then many mechanics are not challenges but just nice features suited for having fun. You can sit down anywhere - it makes for a great vibe in group settings. You can have a party with heavy drinking. There are numerous rare items that you can find in the world, and you can create great artworks with chiseling, even allowing you to chisel little items you can move around.

I think these experiments could have multiple victory conditions, like Civilization - and so cultural victories for the best art and culture.

When me and a group of around 10~ people played VS, the way roles fell into place was almost natural. I was the only one who mined and forged, so people came to me for weapons, armor, or even building materials like nails and hooks. I didn't cook or hunt, so I had to go to my friends in town who processed leather, cloth, cooked food, and sourced materials to me which I paid for in my own specialized crafting. I'd often trade nails for leather, or a pickaxe for a sizeable amount of food. While me and these two other friends kept the basic needs handled, the rest of the town was free to do everything else like adventure, build, find more materials, and find story locations. VS's grind makes having a proper civilization not only preferable, but SUPER fun and satisfying.

One element that Vintage Story does that also improves things - settlements and fortifications can actually matter.

A lot of these videos analyzing civilization challenges have talked about the "murderous player" problem, in which one player goes off living nomadically, gradually becoming powerful enough to randomly assassinate the leaders of player nations just for kicks.

In Vintage Story, that person cannot survive nomadically very well, and so their murder spree won't last long, especially if they can just get killed by a bear.

A community benefits from shared food stocks, tool and armor progression, and then from a town guard. Such guards can easily own random barbarians trying to just get attention.

Even without land claiming, village and fortress walls have a use. It takes a lot longer to dig through blocks in Vintage Story, and if you have cave ins enabled, would be sappers could be buried alive if they aren't well equipped with support beams.

Vintage Story further has the plumb and square tool, which you can use to reinforce specific blocks, making them much harder to mine.

Real castle sieges are now possible, especially if you add a mod that removes nerd-poling. It will make actually armies far more necessary. You could even add capture the flag rules in, some rare item (of which Vintage Story has many) could represent a role play item the other nation stole.

There's many fun possibilities.

1:30: pro tip, if you select the pickaxe icon and turn it orange, it'll automatically change the name of the icon to copper

The second I found this game a couple years ago I immediately thought "Yeah.. This game needs 100 player civilization videos right now" We need a vintage story server like the StoneWorks server, that would be peak.

The key difference is the players in those civ videos aren't joining to simulate society, they're joining to roleplay.