295: The Missing Pieces of Civilization

[Vitor Goncalves]

That last point - about these grand civ games focussing on war - has been irking me too as of late. Every time I play Civ 5, everyone just wants to fight - if you're being too cultural or economic and are lacking in army, if you have too much army, if you have too many cities, or too few, even if you're allied; it's always just war :/

Same in Empire TW - there's no real way to progress without warfare, and the biggest nation is basically the most powerful. There's not much beyond that (though a friend of mine has ridiculous luck with diplomacy).

It would be cool if there was a civ builder were war was an option, not the sole driver, if the largest nation wasn't simply the most powerful. Think of the industrial revolution; GB emerged as the world super power despite being a tiny nation and in direct economic competition with France. Through a negotiated free trade agreement, Britain was able to flood France's markets with their new mass-produced goods and make titanic profits. That's just not the sort of thing that civ games encourage.

I ahvent played civ5 yet, but on all previous, although internal economy plays a major role in your game, global economy doesns't. Of course there are the resources on Civ3 and Ci4 (and assume on Civ5). But usually you only can obtain them through war or through a price that doesnt scale with your economy size. And on previous 4 games that was because all AI civs cheated economically. They could have a huge net loss and still would be able to pay for new units and maintain huge armies, while you had to decomission units and even sell assets in similar situations.
When proposing to buy something from them, you would be confronted with ridiculously high prices and even demands to give part of ur territory away.

On multiplayer, all players also end up just waring, and even in this case with possibility for a more peaceful approach, its totally ignored because your victory conditions call for measures that have more of an agressive side.

I will have a go on Civ5 probbaly when first expansion and a good range of decent mods are out there. But guess on these aspects it wont be much different than the previous.

 

[IndianaJonny]

That last point - about these grand civ games focussing on war - has been irking me too as of late. Every time I play Civ 5, everyone just wants to fight - if you're being too cultural or economic and are lacking in army, if you have too much army, if you have too many cities, or too few, even if you're allied; it's always just war :/

Same in Empire TW....snip.

May I suggest you try Europa Universalis 3. It's much heavier on the diplomacy/economy side of things. Lets say that if you preferred the Diplomacy board game to Risk then EU3 is for you my friend.

Just as a comment on the article, I heartily approve of the (intentional?) use of mathematical game theory terminology and reasoning, a field that, interestingly enough, has it's modern roots in mathematical exercises into outcomes of (then) all the possible scenarios of the Cold War and, for a while, became one of the driving thoughts behind early chess computers such as Deep Blue. The history-to-game-to-history story of this whole field the article dips into is something absolutely fascinating and it's still very much in its infancy in terms of the computer contribution.

 

[Steve Butts]

Just as a comment on the article, I heartily approve of the (intentional?) use of mathematical game theory terminology and reasoning, a field that, interestingly enough, has it's modern roots in mathematical exercises into outcomes of (then) all the possible scenarios of the Cold War and, for a while, became one of the driving thoughts behind early chess computers such as Deep Blue. The history-to-game-to-history story of this whole field the article dips into is something absolutely fascinating and it's still very much in its infancy in terms of the computer contribution.

Definitely intentional. I didn't want to make the Game Theory angle too explicit, but it is a fascinating subject. During our lunchtime D&D game, the CEO and I even used The Prisoners' Dilemma to get information out of a pair of assassins who had been hired to kill us. It's great when abstract theories find practical applications.

 

[IndianaJonny]

Definitely intentional. I didn't want to make the Game Theory angle too explicit, but it is a fascinating subject. During our lunchtime D&D game, the CEO and I even used The Prisoners' Dilemma to get information out of a pair of assassins who had been hired to kill us. It's great when abstract theories find practical applications.

Ha, what a charming example! When I first started my game theory module at university my lecturer opened with something like "this module will help you win board games, nuclear conflicts, women and parliamentary elections" and consequently the first words I wrote in my notes were 'I.Love.This.'

 

[Jumplion]

Ah, Civilization, you brought good memories, and still do through Civilization 5.

Right now I just finished a game as Oda Nobugana or whatever his name was, and I conquered Ramses II (Egypt) 'cause he kept looking at me funny, and whatever the Siamese king's name was used to be friendly towards me, but then got angry at me, so I went to war with him and conquered him. By that time I had met Wu Tzian (China), Elizabeth (Britain), and Catherine (Russia), and only Wu Tzian was guarded towards me, the others constantly denounced me. So, I was bored, and tried to conquer China, but then I forgot she had cities on islands, so I gave up on that since I didn't have a good navy. Then I was bored again, and decided to nuke Sidon later, and a few city-states were mad at me, but I payed them off to be fine, and now everyone is "Guarded" at me as i have a friggin' nuke. Then I built the Apollo Program and went to space earning a Technological victory at 2049.

I do agree, however, that games like Civ or Empire make it difficult to go the diplomacy route. Often times I would love to just settle a dispute, or provide a constitution to spread my ideals to another nation, or whatever. I'd be really interesting to see them expand on the concept of diplomacy.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

Great piece.

Civ and strategy games, they pushed me towards sociology (and historical sociology and the study of ideology in particular).