An intellectual's review

[Kuciwalker]

The WoW economy probably gives us much better information about our real one, given that it's populated by more than 16 agents (and let's face it, the economics of trade between players in civ isn't all that interesting).

[snoopy369]

The advantage civ4 has is, is multiplicity of games. There may be many more actors in WoW, but there are many more games of Civ4. WoW is inherently weak because it has only limited scarcity; you can analyse the rarest items, but those are essentially luxury items anyhow, and thus have limited value. There is no scarcity in 'necessary' items in WoW (as far as I understand); you can play with slightly weaker than the top armor/weapon/etc. and still do fine, although you might do slightly better with the best.

Civ4 has complexity because it is entirely an economy of scarcity (like our own); everything is scarce to some extent, and the number of choices you make is vastly larger than in WoW. Civ really is a combination micro/macro simulator, while WoW is really only macro - it has near zero value in micro, and limited macro due to the scarcity being only luxuries.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Petrus2
That's a good goal. Then addressing the ISSUE, and stating WHY it is wrong, would help achieve such a goal. Simply saying something is wrong or bad doesn't debunk it.

I did give reasons why his arguments were wrong

[guermantes]

IMO Kuci, your initial emphatic triple-post tirade in this thread shows quite clearly that you're just in for a quick fix of trolling.

[Kuciwalker]

[ZEE]

[Wiglaf]

Kuciwalker

And you yet again make a poor assumption

I am not suggesting that Civ 'realistically simulates the world economy'. I am suggesting that Civ has an economic MODEL that is interesting, and yields interesting results when considered economically.

That was not the original claim. But sure, in a fantasy world where inflation is caused by difficulty level and poverty simply does not exist and the only trade between states is either automatic or basically amounts to exchanging one banana for 20 gold and two ivory and taxes don't exist unless the government needs some culture bonuses --- then it's a great simulator. But that's not really a "simulation" of anything, is it?

If this game is a simulation of macroeconomics in any way, then the field has really hit the ****ter since I graduated from college.

[Krill]

Snoopy, stop feeding the troll. OR would be troll, 'cos Kuci is making more sense than you atm...

[Jaybe]

Scrap. I think I'll pretend this thread has been transferred to CFC, all due to the postings of a couple people.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Buddy, this is the internet, not Teletubbies. I don't actually care all that much about whether these comments are going to make the world a happy fuzzy place.

Kuci, he's telling you that you are acting in a self-defeating manner.

I just don't like people arguing that it's a good simulation of the real economy.

I don't believe that's what the blog did. It said, "it combines... [blah]... with many of the better features of a macroeconomic simulator." He didn't say it was an economic simulator, he said it had some of the features of one.

Wodan

[Wiglaf]

He said "many of the better features of a macroeconomic simulator." That is patently, 100% false.

[snoopy369]

See, this is where literal people get in trouble. In the English language there is what's called "interpretation", which is where you read what someone says and understand the meaning behind it in an appropriate context. It's a skill some of us less literal minded people learn early on in life ...

[Kuciwalker]

So what's you're interpretation, snoopy, that happens to make the statement true?

Given that the best feature of a macroeconomic simulator would be correlation with reality, and it's lacking that...

[wodan11]

I agree with Snoopy.

Wodan

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
So what's you're interpretation, snoopy, that happens to make the statement true?

Given that the best feature of a macroeconomic simulator would be correlation with reality, and it's lacking that...

I've already noted that they should not necessarily correlate with reality; that is a hindrance, not a help, because reality is so darn complicated. Anything that pretends to correlate well with reality is introducing too much error. And besides, we have a great economic simulator that correlates with reality - called reality ... The point of a simulator is to limit the variables to a smaller number so as to study their interactions.

A good simulator should simulate economic interactions in an adequately complex manner so as to be interesting, but not so complex as to lose the ability to look at individual elements of 'why' things work how they do.