Wow, the notion that a simulator should be absolutely faithful in every detail to some real thing seems to be growing rather than going away. Perhaps I should be using fewer words rather than more. A simulator is a simulator even if it is very simple. Heck, it is also a simulator even if it is low fidelity. I never contended that it was as complex as a real civilization. I also never contended that it was flawlessly faithful to actual history (never mind some random person's interpretation of history.)
Yet I do believe it is just plain wrong to suggest that it has nothing to do with history. Clearly the designers balanced playability with fidelity in order that the whole thing should make some sort of sense. Again we see a tendency to interpret symbols in gratuitously shallow ways. A worker doesn't represent a single crew of slaves or serfs or Department of Transportation employees -- it represents a society's efforts to develop infrastructure in the area where that worker is located. This is not only obvious to people who are not wrapped up in overly literal interpretations, but it is also easily inferred by the fact that workers need not be rebuilt as changes in civics and technologies produce changes in their capabilities. When some capacity to think abstractly is brought to bear on interpretation, it isn't so hard to see how the brutality of slavery is less efficient at working the land than the oppression of serfdom. My talk of treating everything like a fast food cash register may seem condescending, yet again and again responses are made down at that level.
Of course the system is not perfect. Of course it is not as complex as a real civilization. I never contended that it was either of those things. Pointing out again and again that it is not is a bizarre way to respond to that. Of course it becomes all the more bizarre when the mark is missed with distortions like the idea that designating a population point as an "artist" literally means you have one artist in your civilization. I would interpret the mechanics of the caste system as holding that in other societies there simply is no support (patronage, consumer purchasing power, et al.) for a large number of artists, while a caste system enables people to live with an impractically large segment of society devoted to such pursuits.
Again, I wonder where all this "it must be as big as a real economy/civilization" nonsense comes from. It seems to me disagreeing just to be disagreeable. Excellent simulators may be extremely simple relative to the subjects they involve. For ages wargames simulated military conflict in ways that neglect hundreds of factors and abstracted large complex armies into simple wooden blocks. Is it wrong to call those wargames strategic simulators because the ancient versions did not smell of blood and gore while the modern ones lacked the scent of gunpowder? By the same token, a macroeconomic simulator could be as simple as shuffling a few variables around with a couple of pages of BASIC code. Just as a map does not need to be actual size to be useful, an economic simulator does not need to meet some implausible standard of sophistication to be useful. What about that isn't getting through to the other side of this discussion?
Regards,
Adam Weishaupt
Adam
Snoop
Despite what some others may think; I believe that snoop has quite adequately defended and explained his position. It seems that the ney sayers like to live in two different worlds. The world where you interpret everything to the literal extreme and the world where you blur a definition of something to the point that you can make it mean anything you want with illogical reasoning.
Saving face is all that is left for some...
Wow, the notion that a simulator should be absolutely faithful in every detail to some real thing seems to be growing rather than going away.
I know it's a lot easier to attack strawmen, but can you come back to reality please? Oh, wait, that's you're whole problem...
Your premise is flawed. Therefore, all of your conclusions are flawed. I'm not going to bother with the rest of it.
edit: I lied, I'm actually going to respond to one other part of his post:
Again, I wonder where all this "it must be as big as a real economy/civilization" nonsense comes from.
You, since I've never claimed it.
Originally posted by BigFree
Adam
Snoop
Despite what some others may think; I believe that snoop has quite adequately defended and explained his position. It seems that the ney sayers like to live in two different worlds. The world where you interpret everything to the literal extreme and the world where you blur a definition of something to the point that you can make it mean anything you want with illogical reasoning.
Yay, more strawmen.
Saving face is all that is left for some...
Obviously. Otherwise, Adam would be debating points I've made, rather than points he wishes I'd make.
Restating the argument for the nth time:
1. Let a simulator be a computer program that models a real phenomenon/a, with some meaningful accuracy and precision. (Definition)
2. Therefore a macroeconomic simulator is a computer program that models an economy in macro scale, with some meaningful accuracy and precision. (From 1)
3. Assume Civ is a macroeconomic simulator. (Hypothesis)
4. Therefore Civ models an economy in macro scale, with some meaningful accuracy and precision. (From 2 and 3)
5. We can see that the foundation of Civ's economic model not only fails to reflect reality, but actively contradicts it on numerous points (if you really want examples of how the food/hammer/commerce system contradicts reality at basic levels, I'll be happy to provide them). (Justified by observation.)
6. Therefore civ does not model an economy in macro scale with meaningful accuracy. (From 5)
7. Contradiction. (From 4 and 6)
8. Therefore Civ is not a macroeconomic simulator. (From 4 and 7)
Obviously you're going to want to challenge 5. Good luck with that ()
To be absolutely clear, nowhere does this proof require that Civ exactly model reality, or that its elements match up literally with the real-world elements they're named after. It merely requires some meaningful correlation between the two. And no, "getting other civs so mad that they cut off your trade routes damages your economy, just like in real life" does not suffice.
Last edited by Kuciwalker; November 8, 2007 at 03:57.
Like most of your posts another negative statement. No information. Just a meaningless retort. A waste of time to both the poster and the reader.Originally posted by Kuciwalker
If I cared about face I wouldn't bother posting in threads like this.
Now what would be useful is to explain why you do post in these threads. Something positive for a change
It is nice to see someone trying to learn logic. Yet, like listening to someone trying to learn the trumpet, the experience is not always pleasant in the way that a seasoned performer's efforts will tend to be pleasing. The weak link here is this "I can point out a flaw. Therefore the whole thing is unrealistic and meaningless." There are other names for this mental malfunction, but for now we can leave it at "one bad apple spoils the barrel" thinking. In fact, the game could even have many departures from reality (as it does) and yet be meaningful as a macroeconomic simulator. This analysis falls flat because it does not consider the work as a whole, or in any useful context, but rather it demands that the game be flawless in its realism. Earlier Kuciwalker suggested he has taken no such position, so perhaps the problem is that he takes precisely that position without recognizing that he has taken it.
However, I can also address the grain/hammers/coins thing while I'm here. The first step, and I know this can be hard for some people, but I really urge all to take it with me, is to stop focusing on the symbols as if they should be interpreted without any sense of the abstract. Agriculture, industry, and commerce are the three pillars on which any independent national economy must stand. It may be possible to run a society without producing any food, but at that point you have an economy that can only exist as part of a dependent state importing sustenance for its population. That Civilization chooses those three elements as the foundation of its economic model hardly shows that it "actively contradicts" reality. As it happens, in reality those three elements are the foundations of comparable macroeconomic scenarios.
In most instances, the relationship between these inputs and land utilization is sensible. Hill country is not ideal for farming, but it will tend to yield more mineral wealth, offer up more of the wind and water features that powered much of medieval industry, and thus establish a foundation for a subsequent emphasis on heavy industry. Areas near a river or coastline have access to a more efficient alternative to overland shipping. This encourages more buying and selling, a.k.a. commerce. The resources of forests are not mineral in nature, but they are also useful for industrial applications like raising structures or fueling furnaces. The biggest stretch in all this is the plains/grassland distinction. Yet even that may reflect a designers' intent that grasslands are more consistently arable while plains represent drier, windier, and more uneven terrain than grasslands.
Again, this is not perfect, and it was done with consideration toward the fun factor of the game. However, it was also done with consideration toward the meaningfulness of the simulation (which is itself part of the fun factor of the game.) However, to see how it is meaningful, it is important to stop thinking of "hammers" as sticks of wood with heavy bludgeons on the business end and start thinking of them as symbols that represent industrial capacity. Likewise, "food" is not an actual bundle of grain but a representation a measure of agricultural productivity, and "coins" are not actual tokens but representations of the potential for commerce. Whether it seems like a huge leap or it is recognized for the baby step it actually is, that degree of progress into abstraction should unlock a whole new perspective on the meaningfulness of the economic model that rests on those forms of productivity.
As to the notion that Civilization's population model is Malthusian, well, I suppose it is if a player is such a lazy slug as to let cities grow to the point of starvation and then be constrained by default. On the other hand, if someone actually pays attention to the details of an ongoing game (i.e. recognizes that economic stewardship of a thriving Civ involves a lot more than moving a couple of sliders around) then it becomes something much different. Other than being a gloomy alarmist, Malthus's chief blunder was in failing to recognize that civilization would advance to find new ways of farming and new ways of living at the same time as populations continued to grow. His argument would have held true if idleness left the billions of humans alive today to feed themselves with oxen-plowed fields while continuing to dump untreated urban sewage near urban drinking water sources. Between technological advances and the natural tendency of birth rates to fall in stable prosperous societies with responsible retirement security and national health policies, reality did not turn out like Malthus warned it should. In a well-played game of Civ, oversight of productivity and the advance of technology produce results that are not like Malthusian warnings and strikingly similar to the actual growth of populations in prosperous regions of the modern world.
Now, I could address more, but I would urge critics to look at this from a holistic perspective. Sure, there may have been some fudge factors in game design for the sake of enhancing play. However, there is much in the game that is meaningful and consistent with the forces that drove human history. Of course, in history there is no difficulty level, but there also is no ghostmind overseeing the entire course of a single culture. Some of the "unreal" factors exist only to accommodate the fact that any simulation of this scope, to be even remotely accessible to a living human being, demands extreme condensation of reality. Ultimately all simulations engage in some condensation of reality. Otherwise, they would be realities of their own. When we set aside those entirely legitimate liberties, then look at the remainder of the game on balance, I believe it stands up to precisely the conditions set forth in my comment that it contains "many of the better features of a macroeconomic simulator." Perhaps the negativity on that point is in earnest, but to me it remains an unpersuasive case resting on an assortment of distortions and nitpicks.
Regards,
Adam Weishaupt
Last edited by Adam Weishaupt; November 8, 2007 at 09:08.
...i wish i saw Civ in this same light. i dont have the attention span or the schooling to delve into the details of the game and compare it to reality the way Demonweed has. i might be one of the few people that just plays to kill a few hours of the day. i only play on Noble level so i will not brag of my achievements or my incredible strategy. mostly i just play for fun.
i can also say that i am guilty of this little point of debate:
As to the notion that Civilization's population model is Malthusian, well, I suppose it is if a player is such a lazy slug as to let cities grow to the point of starvation and then be constrained by default.
again i do not have the attention span or the patience to worry about stuff like this. i sometimes in the late game just build whatever my advisors tell me to, me only dealing with political and military movements. i played M003 very similar to this strategy. i commend you on your intelligence and rationality to explore deep concepts such as the ones you are describing and still enjoy the game on a regular basis.
i was a fanatic civ 1-2 player. i played every day. I tapered off a little during civ3 but still played. mostly i was stuck on trying to beat Monarch level with accelerated production on (a very difficult thing to do. was NOT like normal monarch level at all,) a task which i can boast that i have achieved only once. civ4, however being a great game, does not peak my interest the way its predeccesors did. this might come from my real-life obligations, or my just being burned out on the series, or what have you. indeed if i focused as much time and energy on the game now than i did, oh about 6-10 years ago, i would be as fanatical and deep thinking about such concepts as the ones you describe and would enjoy getting into lengthy debates about them for hours on end.
sadly, this is not the case for me anymore, and as such my civ skils have dwindled to below average and my consideration for the intriguing concepts such as the plains/grassland distinction has just become a topic of interesting read to me rather that a fiery point of contention...
such as you have met with some of my peers here.
thank you and piece™
So you're saying IRL that war weariness doesn't have an impact on the economy?Originally posted by Wiglaf
ALL OF THESE EFFECTS IN THE GAME ARE ARBITRARY. They SIMULATE NOTHING. The war weariness model in the game is designed for gameplay purposes and models absolutely nothing in reality!
I did. I see quite a few unsupported bald statements such as the one you just made about war weariness.I already did. Look at my earlier posts on this page.
That assertion is so ridiculous that it's not even worth replying to, which is probably why nobody did the first time. Difficulty level is an artificial game construct merely for the sake of tacking on a "dial" after the game was designed.For such a complex macroeconomic simulator to tell us that inflation can be changed by altering the difficulty level of the game is really shocking, to say the least.
Probably a good idea. Sometimes I get confused before I have my coffee and think I'm on CFC.Originally posted by Adam Weishaupt
Can't we just agree that the hostile duo are misinformed without engaging in the Sisyphian task of demonstrating to them that they are wrong? I mean, it already seems clear they don't really care about the underlying reality -- what matters most is saving face (even if it is self-deception to imagine either of them have any sort of reputation for insight to rehabilitate in the first place.)
Wodan
You people really do have a deep compelling need to be in the right and thus remain parrots, dont you
if you want to stop terrorism; stop participating in it
''Oh,Commissar,if we could put the potatoes in one pile,they would reach the foot of God''.But,replied the commissar,''This is the Soviet Union.There is no God''.''Thats all right'' said the worker,''There are no potatoes''
Civ says it certainly doesn't. If you've got the Statue of Zeus, that is.So you're saying IRL that war weariness doesn't have an impact on the economy?
Everything in Civ is an artifical game construct, that is what you need to sit down and realize.That assertion is so ridiculous that it's not even worth replying to, which is probably why nobody did the first time. Difficulty level is an artificial game construct merely for the sake of tacking on a "dial" after the game was designed.
You're not smart, you're arrogant. Go away.It is nice to see someone trying to learn logic. Yet, like listening to someone trying to learn the trumpet, the experience is not always pleasant in the way that a seasoned performer's efforts will tend to be pleasing.
Ok guys... so far, you have all been pretty good at attacking the arguments/POV's and not the posters.Originally posted by Wiglaf
You're not smart, you're arrogant. Go away.
But not this line...
Remember, discuss the topic, argue the points, but do not attack the posters or make personal insults.
TONE IT DOWN FOLKS!
Keep on Civin'
RIP Baron O
Kuci, your first point is where your logic fails.
1. Let a simulator be a computer program that models a real phenomenon/a, with some meaningful accuracy and precision. (Definition)
That is not the definition that I (and adam, and others) operate from. I define a simulation as a program that models some aspect(s) of a real phenomena, and/or abstracts a real phenomena so as to determine valuable insights into the real phenomena.
Basically, I would consider the standard Prisoner's Dilemna situation, where you have two people in separate rooms asked if they will agree to proclaim the other's guilt, to be a meaningful simulation of economic phenomena, even though it is far more abstract than Civ or basically anything else.
The fact that my economics professors agree with me in this, several of which having won the Nobel Prize, I would suggest supports this definition.
<Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.
//
off topic and for the sake of millimeter justice: actually it is not a Nobel Prize and is not awarded by the Nobel Foundation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Economics
//
I agree with you on the other points though
"Can we get a patch that puts Palin under Quayle?" - Theben
One of the things I must say of Adam W. is that he writes WELL (though I would have used learning to play a violin instead of trumpet). Made reading his post #97 a pleasure. Thank you.
Actually, playing more towards Malthusian neglect is something I tend towards a little in order to give the AI a little more of a handicap, given the difficulty level I play. At the same time, however, immersion into the fantasy of the role ("Rommel Syndrome" would have been the term in the old board wargame field), along with the replayability is a major appeal of the game. Again, I thank random events for its assistance in making BtS an adventure.
Actually, you may not have noticed it because Adam's writing is so bad, but he's been making the majority of the snide, insulting remarks here.Originally posted by Ming
Ok guys... so far, you have all been pretty good at attacking the arguments/POV's and not the posters.
But not this line...
Remember, discuss the topic, argue the points, but do not attack the posters or make personal insults.
TONE IT DOWN FOLKS!
Originally posted by Adam Weishaupt
It is nice to see someone trying to learn logic. Yet, like listening to someone trying to learn the trumpet, the experience is not always pleasant in the way that a seasoned performer's efforts will tend to be pleasing.
I know, your posts are a pain in the ass to read. You violate almost every rule of good argumentative writing I've seen, apart from being actually incoherent.
The weak link here is this "I can point out a flaw. Therefore the whole thing is unrealistic and meaningless." There are other names for this mental malfunction, but for now we can leave it at "one bad apple spoils the barrel" thinking. In fact, the game could even have many departures from reality (as it does) and yet be meaningful as a macroeconomic simulator.
Straw-man! Straw-man! Straw-man!
You really get off on arguing against imaginary opponents, don't you?
I never claimed that becuase one part is bad, so iss the whole thing. I claimed that because the foundation is bad, so is the whole thing.
Earlier Kuciwalker suggested he has taken no such position, so perhaps the problem is that he takes precisely that position without recognizing that he has taken it.
Or maybe the problem is that you just really, really wish I had taken that position because you can actually argue against it.
However, I can also address the grain/hammers/coins thing while I'm here. The first step, and I know this can be hard for some people, but I really urge all to take it with me, is to stop focusing on the symbols as if they should be interpreted without any sense of the abstract.
Who are you talking to here? Certainly not me...
Agriculture, industry, and commerce are the three pillars on which any independent national economy must stand. It may be possible to run a society without producing any food, but at that point you have an economy that can only exist as part of a dependent state importing sustenance for its population. That Civilization chooses those three elements as the foundation of its economic model hardly shows that it "actively contradicts" reality. As it happens, in reality those three elements are the foundations of comparable macroeconomic scenarios.
Its not the choice, duh. It's how they are implemented. Regarding food: Civ treats population growth as Malthusian based on the food supply. This is wrong. Moreover, the largest cities are the ones with the most food sources nearby, whereas in reality the largest cities are the ones with the most trade or jobs.
(Aside: It would actually make more sense to have cities grow based on commerce... actually that's not a bad idea...)
Re: production, you're left with the fact that Civ has production come solely from natural resources, multiplied by production facilities e.g. factories. Production comes from labor. In fact, this was probably even more true in ancient times than today. Building the pyramids required stone, yes, but more importantly it required a huge population of slaves (or paid workers, as recent archeological discoveries seem to indicate). Civ turns this on its head - the small city on a few hills will be far more productive than the huge city built only on flood plains, even though the flood plains city should be far more productive. And no, this isn't taking anything too literally, unless you want to claim that hammers don't actually represent some abstract sense of production, which is absurd.
In most instances, the relationship between these inputs and land utilization is sensible. Hill country is not ideal for farming, but it will tend to yield more mineral wealth
Not really unless there's a resource there, but even so, mineral wealth is a tiny part of production, as I've just established.
offer up more of the wind and water features that powered much of medieval industry, and thus establish a foundation for a subsequent emphasis on heavy industry.
Windmills were 99% agricultural until the Industrial Revolution. As established above, "nearby hills" did not create high-production cities. Large populations did. Labor did.
Areas near a river or coastline have access to a more efficient alternative to overland shipping. This encourages more buying and selling, a.k.a. commerce.
I'll get to commerce in a bit.
The resources of forests are not mineral in nature, but they are also useful for industrial applications like raising structures or fueling furnaces.
Forests, like hills, don't increase production. Cities built near forest for the purpose of cutting down said forest tended not to do much but make wood and ship it somewhere else. They didn't usually build much stuff themselves. And there's no reason too - material resources are too easy to transport, compared to the labor cost of actually putting them together into something useful like a ship.
The biggest stretch in all this is the plains/grassland distinction. Yet even that may reflect a designers' intent that grasslands are more consistently arable while plains represent drier, windier, and more uneven terrain than grasslands.
Which obviously means it's more productive, just with less food?
However, to see how it is meaningful, it is important to stop thinking of "hammers" as sticks of wood with heavy bludgeons on the business end and start thinking of them as symbols that represent industrial capacity.
You are the only person doing this.
Likewise, "food" is not an actual bundle of grain but a representation a measure of agricultural productivity
You are the only person doing this.
and "coins" are not actual tokens but representations of the potential for commerce.
You are the only person doing this.
Whether it seems like a huge leap or it is recognized for the baby step it actually is, that degree of progress into abstraction should unlock a whole new perspective on the meaningfulness of the economic model that rests on those forms of productivity.
I agree. Once you catch up to the rest of us understanding that, you'll see how absurd the foundations of Civ's economy are.
As to the notion that Civilization's population model is Malthusian, well, I suppose it is if a player is such a lazy slug as to let cities grow to the point of starvation and then be constrained by default. On the other hand, if someone actually pays attention to the details of an ongoing game (i.e. recognizes that economic stewardship of a thriving Civ involves a lot more than moving a couple of sliders around) then it becomes something much different.
No, it doesn't. The changing amount of food available doesn't eliminate the Malthusian-ness (Malthusianity?) of the system. Very simply, population grows logistically towards a maximum, determined by the food supply. That's obviously false just from looking at modern population growth rates - they actually have little to do with food supply (except that right now, they're negatively correlated) and have everything to do with prosperity.
On commerce:
This is the weirdest of the three resources. Civ is a bit schizophrenic about it, actually. On one hand, commerce seems to abstractly represent the amount of merchant trade occuring in the city - note that you get more commerce from sea and river tiles, and from valuable trade goods (and from trade routes!). On the other hand, it seems to represent the local highly-educated workforce - the scientists and priests and artists and engineers. I actually don't have as much of a problem with this resource, because it produces vaguely realist results - increases in either of those should benefit tax revenues, scientific advancement and culture. On the other hand, the brokenness of the food mechanic means that high-commerce cities are still tied to a local food supply, which is obviously wrong.
Actually Civ very well models the malthusian/nonmalthusian food cycle ...
Malthus is right that if (# people) > (amount of food), then people die. He's wrong in most other things of course, but this element is true.
Two things get around the simpler malthusian arguments. First off, technological improvements to farming/etc., which is modeled in Civ by irrigation being progressively easier, then the Biology boost, and the various health gains (granary, aquaduct, etc.)
Secondly is the ability to trade food; a country can trade things for food in order to survive beyond its local growing ability. Civ does not fully model this, but does model a part of this, by trading for health resources (which directly correlate to food in any location with a shortage of health, which will be most locations close to their food limit).
Regardless, the point is that it doesn't matter if civ models this or anything else realistically. I don't think anything in civ is or should be particularly realistic.
What is interesting in civ is the ways the player makes decisions based on economic choices. Not that those choices are realistic; but that they are economic choices the same as, say, a player in WoW chooses to buy a particular item (or manage his money, etc.). Understanding the ways people make choices gives you insight into how other choices are made, and into how real economic policy should be shaped.
I suppose my usage of the word 'macroeconomic' is probably causing some of the problem here; I studied under Robert Lucas (among others), who won his in-memory-of-Alfred-Nobel prize (
<Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.
Secondly is the ability to trade food; a country can trade things for food in order to survive beyond its local growing ability. Civ does not fully model this, but does model a part of this, by trading for health resources (which directly correlate to food in any location with a shortage of health, which will be most locations close to their food limit).
This is a dramatic improvement in Civ 4, but still far, far short of reality. Especially since food resources affect your entire empire simultaneously.
Regardless, the point is that it doesn't matter if civ models this or anything else realistically. I don't think anything in civ is or should be particularly realistic.
Of course it shouldn't be, it's a game. But that means it's not a macroeconomic simulator.
What is interesting in civ is the ways the player makes decisions based on economic choices. Not that those choices are realistic; but that they are economic choices the same as, say, a player in WoW chooses to buy a particular item (or manage his money, etc.). Understanding the ways people make choices gives you insight into how other choices are made, and into how real economic policy should be shaped.
Just because it has an economy doesn't mean that it's a macroeconomic simulator, because that implies some relation to the real economy.
I suppose my usage of the word 'macroeconomic' is probably causing some of the problem here; I studied under Robert Lucas
"Studied under" as in "attended a lecture by" or "had as my thesis advisor"?
Studied under as in took microeconomics from in a discussion class (~25 students), and studied in the department that was fundamentally organized around his teaching
You're fundamentally misunderstanding simulator, as I keep saying. You don't need to simulate everything, or even much, to simulate economic interactions. Call it "model" if it makes you feel better; it still is very interesting to an economist.
<Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.
I'm not trying to say it should simulate everything. I'm pointing out that the stuff that it does try to simulate is wrong.
How SHOULD it be simulated then?Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I'm not trying to say it should simulate everything. I'm pointing out that the stuff that it does try to simulate is wrong.
Please keep within gaming boundaries. While I enjoy civ, I still regret the "traditions" of some of civ's basic design parameters.
How SHOULD it be simulated then?
Please keep within gaming boundaries.
It shouldn't, because Civ is a game. I'm glad it's not a macroeconomic simulator, that probably wouldn't be as fun.
I have played many simulations that were enjoyable. It just takes a little more elegance in design to incorporate both.*Originally posted by Kuciwalker
It shouldn't, because Civ is a game. I'm glad it's not a macroeconomic simulator, that probably wouldn't be as fun.
For one thing, the non-trading of food in civ games from food-rich to food-poor cities can be seen as a violation of economies once transportation & food preservation (whether it be in food forms or refrigeration) are available. However, it may be a comes-out-in-the-wash situation when viewed from the whole civ/country.
*Redmond Simonsen & James Dunnigan were great at that back in the 1970s.
For one thing, the non-trading of food in civ games from food-rich to food-poor cities can be seen as a violation of economies once transportation & food preservation (whether it be in food forms or refrigeration) are available. However, it may be a comes-out-in-the-wash situation when viewed from the whole civ/country.
It's nonsense from long before that point. Rome imported grain all the way from Egypt. And it really doesn't come out in the wash, if you actually pay attention to the way your empire develops - or just read some of Blake's strategies and put two and two together.
You're still not understanding what i'm saying, though.Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I'm not trying to say it should simulate everything. I'm pointing out that the stuff that it does try to simulate is wrong.
The economic interactions don't have to relate directly to real world interactions. At all. You can draw economic conclusions from the way a person, or a group of people, make choices any time they are given choices, and then relate those back to the real world in entirely different situations.
You're saying it should try to simulate some real world things. I'm saying it does not, and should not, simulate any real world anything, except the choices people make when confronted with limited resources. Economics is, fundamentally, the study of choice; anything else is applied economics.
<Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.
You're saying it should try to simulate some real world things. I'm saying it does not, and should not, simulate any real world anything, except the choices people make when confronted with limited resources. Economics is, fundamentally, the study of choice; anything else is applied economics.
If you are studying just what choices the human makes when presented with this problem, you're studying micro, not macro. This Adam kid is talking about simulations in the same sense I am, i.e. the actual behavior of the civ given the human input is related to how a real civ would behave.
As I said above, I see micro and macro together. One person's choice as opposed to how a group of people's choices interact are not that different; and both are interesting in civ (though more so in MP for the latter). It's still choice, fundamentally.Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You're saying it should try to simulate some real world things. I'm saying it does not, and should not, simulate any real world anything, except the choices people make when confronted with limited resources. Economics is, fundamentally, the study of choice; anything else is applied economics.
If you are studying just what choices the human makes when presented with this problem, you're studying micro, not macro. This Adam kid is talking about simulations in the same sense I am, i.e. the actual behavior of the civ given the human input is related to how a real civ would behave.
<Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.
You're weird. I think your point of view is so odd (and so far removed from the OP) that I'm not going to try to argue it further. Maybe it's valid, maybe not... meh.
I mean, by your reasoning Zelda is also a macroeconomic simulator.
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