An intellectual's review

[Kuciwalker]

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.

That's nonsense. Error in such a model is, by definition, conflict with reality. Therefore, they should try to render the whole system erronous?

The point of a simulator is to limit the variables to a smaller number so as to study their interactions.

The interactions you're studying in civ have nothing to do with the real world, so it's all pointless.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
The interactions you're studying in civ have nothing to do with the real world.

I thought we've already been over that, Kuci?

You keep trying to turn a subjective, observational situation into an iron-clad absolute.

Wodan

[Kuciwalker]

I've already granted your minor exceptions. It remains that the core economics - food/hammer/commerce - is nonsense.

[wodan11]

Whatever your personal definitions of such terms as "reality", "economics", "simulation", etc. the bottom line fact is that the goal of any simulation is simply to be able to abstract the simulated situation such that one can draw conclusions that will improve one's understanding of that situation. However perfect (or imperfect, as you would put forth -- is the glass half-empty or half-full?) the simulation, it is a simple fact that it is the simple process of abstraction that is valuable (not the degree of abstraction), and that it allows one to perceive a simpler situation and say, X works here... how does that affect the full situation?

You might reply by saying, yes, but the "leap" is too much... by abstracting so far, it means we have to stretch further when we attempt to apply a conlusion to the full situation.

Well, the same is true of the opposite procedure... we could abstract very little, but that would then require a herculean effort to draw any sort of conclusion because the situation is so complex.

So, where is the effort expended? In abstracting more or less, or in having to take more or less into account when extrapolating to the full situation?

Ultimately, I think we could say that both situations are valuable. Both would grant insights, and both require effort (in different places, but effort nonetheless).

Denigrating one or the other of these approaches seems to me to be denigrating a wrench in favor of a screwdriver. Both tools have their uses. And, a conclusion easily obtainable from one of the tools, would be difficult if not impossible to obtain from the other. Optimally, a serious student of "economics" would utilize both approaches.

Wodan

[Wiglaf]

Oh my god. I'm sorry, snoopy, but damn.

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.

Do you know what a simulation is?

Whatever your personal definitions of such terms as "reality", "economics", "simulation", etc. the bottom line fact is that the goal of any simulation is simply to be able to abstract the simulated situation such that one can draw conclusions that will improve one's understanding of that situation..

What aspects of reality does civilization simulate such that we can draw any remotely useful conclusions about real world economics? I can name about a dozen fundamental aspects of basic economics it completely urinates on.

[guermantes]

In my youth there was an imported Czechoslovakian clay-character-cartoon on TV that (loosely translated) was called "Two dudes...". Episodes were about 5 minutes each and the dudes were out of clay.

One episode could be "Two dudes go fishing" and they would accompany the funny Czechoslovakian music by falling out of the boat, snaring each other with fishing line, drop their food in the water and loose the oars.

Or there was "Two dudes repair the garden shed" in which they hit their thumbs with hammers, fell down ladders, dropped a bucket of paint on each other, fell down another ladder.

A third was "Two dudes go to town" where they would try to find their way into town, debate about how to hold the map and step on the wrong bus only to step in water when then got off.

Boy, watching those two dudes continuously fall over themselves was really funny...

[Kuciwalker]

Cute.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
What aspects of reality does civilization simulate such that we can draw any remotely useful conclusions about real world economics?

I already named one, that international relations has an impact, often a drastic one. That monopolies have value, both in an absolute sense to improve your own economy, and in a relative sense to either deny or to trade to other nations. That war production hurts infrastructure development. That war weariness has an impact.

I can name about a dozen fundamental aspects of basic economics it completely urinates on.

Go for it. Instead of mouthing unsupported statements, let's hear some actual information.

Wodan

[Jaybe]

For crying out softly Wodan, Wiglaf lives in D.C.! You can't access any real information there, just statistics (i.e., errant data) and inflexible belief systems.

[Wiglaf]

I already named one, that international relations has an impact, often a drastic one. That monopolies have value, both in an absolute sense to improve your own economy, and in a relative sense to either deny or to trade to other nations. That war production hurts infrastructure development. That war weariness has an impact.

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!

Go for it. Instead of mouthing unsupported statements, let's hear some actual information.

I already did. Look at my earlier posts on this page. 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.

[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.)

Still, it may be worthwhile for clarity's sake to elaborate. The key here is to form some consensus about what "simulator" actually means. Because some flight simulators now feature moving and shaking pods, does that mean all previous flight simulators were bogus? Are today's flight simulators bogus because they cannot provide trainee pilots with artificial G-forces for durations that realistically model high speed maneuvers? Clearly, affirmative answers in both cases here are unreasonable. Similarly unreasonable antics are at the heart of these objections. To focus on what Civ's economic model doesn't do, as well as on what it substantially simplifies, is merely a trick to draw the mind away from what it does do (either that, or some people are suffering from a mental malfunction that resulted in self-deception following the same mechanism.)

What Civ does do in the broadest sense is facilitate the modeling of the rise (and fall if one loses) of a major civilization so quickly that the entire experience can be had in a single session. In this process, it models population growth, technological advance, international relations, military conflict, and even macroeconomic stewardship. It may not dignify nonsense like "tax cuts always create growth," so I can see why it might be objectionable to some. Heck, it even suggests rampant industrialization unaccompanied by sufficient pollution controls can degrade the usefulness of land. How dare it make such assertions so blatantly unrealistic! (. . . to dittoheads at least. )

Still, I understand that objections here go beyond a fixation on ideological garbage that is (wisely) not incorporated into Civ's modeling techniques. Again, I believe the sensible thing to do in evaluating this component of the game is to look at what it does do. It does force compromises between taxation, innovation, and cultural expansion. It does reflect the impact of various broad political, social, and economic policies on human endeavors. Build orders and worker behavior provide a host of options to simulate regional/local development. Also, terrain values offer a limited selection of uneven choices when overseeing local productivity (for example, a coastal river city may offer many excellent choices when it comes to maximizing population growth and commercial activity, but quantitatively inferior industrial options may be deliberately incorporated into the mix as a means to insure a burgeoning metropolis is not underdeveloped on an institutional level.)

Sure, the game doesn't warn players that Wall Street is fragile with unsound speculation, then encourage them to cut interest rates to prop up the market. However, it does let players make a choice like, "my commercial sector is weakening, so I'll stop ordering university development and start building banks in my largest cities," or, "this war could go either way, but it will probably end quickly, so I'll cut back on long term research in order to raise funds to modernize the equipment in the hands of my existing army." The fact that the choices made in the game are not perfectly parallel to the expectations of "realism" as articulated so far in this thread is no more a valid criticism than complaining that the game does not dispatch formally attired secretaries to hand out reports as printed documents. That too would make for a much more "realistic" experience, but its absence does not make the existing simulation meaningless at all.

In the end, the question of perspective can run very deep or very shallow. The very shallow perspective might involve thinking like, "WTF?!? Organized religion gives me additional hammers? Are my people worshiping John Henry now!?!" The deeper perspective is more like, "by uniting my people under one official religion, they will converge more harmoniously when convened for purposes of construction or military training." An Amish barn-raising would clearly demonstrate the former mechanism in reality, while the latter could be seen in a phenomenon like the rallying of knights behind clerical calls for Crusades abroad. All it really takes to get your head around this stuff is to stop looking at the symbols so literally and start looking at how the concepts they represent function in the context of game mechanics. Again, obtaining this understanding involves looking past the symbols and into the meaning of those symbols. Since that kind of understanding also promotes good game play, I advocate its pursuit to any who are at all interested in making the most of the franchise.

It all comes back to what is meant by "macroeconomic simulator." The good news for me is, as the person who actually wrote the original piece, I am uniquely positioned to clarify the underlying intent. Perhaps this is best done by looking at one of Avalon Hill's earliest products -- Stalingrad. Cardboard squares represented armies, a simple map overlayed with a hexagonal grid represented the Third Reich's Eastern Front, and weather for the day was determined by comparing the results of a simple dice roll to a simple table. Of course real weather is not determined by rolling dice. Of course armies can march in more than one of six bearings. The game was full of abstractions that make Civ look fantastically sophisticated by comparison. Yet it was one of the first commercial products derived from a long tradition of wargaming based on similar rulesets and similar paraphernalia. Stalingrad was a strategic military simulation, and a widely-praised one at that.

To suggest that Civ lacks "some of the best features of a macroeconomic simulator" is pretty warped thinking. So far critics have only to offer counterdefinitions by way of negativity, which hardly offers anything useful or informative to others. The criticism rests only on flailing assertions as to what Civ is not or what macroeconomic simulators are not, rather than someone acting out of integrity to provide concrete details on what he or she believes a macroeconomic simulator is. As I have suggested, the old text-based Kingdom game, working with no more than twenty variables and code so simple the whole thing could be printed in a few pages of Antic magazine, was in fact a macroeconomic simulator. It may not have been realistic, but it was meaningful and useful. With depth increased by several orders of magnitude, Civ is much more meaningful and much more useful. However, to see that meaning and get at that use, one must reach beyond negativity for the sake of negativity and demonstrate at least an average teenager's capacity for comprehension. The problem is, now a couple of people are in a position where doing that would involve admitting a mistake. In all the time forum regulars have known those two, has either one ever done anything of the kind?

Regards,
Adam Weishaupt

P.S. Okay, maybe I've been too civil in all of this. Seriously, Wiglaf doesn't believe that a nation might grow weary of warfare and become plagued by dropping public morale and growing civil disobedience if a military conflict drags on interminably? Is he from D.C. or another planet? Whichever the case, I recommend somebody who knows his address start shipping him history books with all possible haste.

[Kuciwalker]

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.)

If I cared about face I wouldn't bother posting in threads like this.

Still, it may be worthwhile for clarity's sake to elaborate. The key here is to form some consensus about what "simulator" actually means.

Okay, that's not hard. A simulator is a computer model, to some degree of accuracy, of a real phenomenon.

Because some flight simulators now feature moving and shaking pods, does that mean all previous flight simulators were bogus? Are today's flight simulators bogus because they cannot provide trainee pilots with artificial G-forces for durations that realistically model high speed maneuvers?

No, but they would be bogus if you increased altitude by flapping the aircrafts' wings.

Clearly, affirmative answers in both cases here are unreasonable. Similarly unreasonable antics are at the heart of these objections. To focus on what Civ's economic model doesn't do, as well as on what it substantially simplifies, is merely a trick to draw the mind away from what it does do (either that, or some people are suffering from a mental malfunction that resulted in self-deception following the same mechanism.)

Except that's not what's happening. I've pointed out numerous times that what Civ does do is just plain wrong. The foundation of the Civ economy - food/hammers/commerce and how you get them - are nonsense. They don't reflect reality at all. They don't model it in any meaningful way. The only suggestion of a correlation between Civ and the real world that I've seen so far is that "when you get other civs mad at you, they cut off trade and your economy suffers". A valid example, but not enough to counter the fact that the production, trade, and population growth models are wrong. There's nothing wrong with that - Civ isn't supposed to be a simulator, it's supposed to be a game - but it means that you can't call Civ an economic simulator.

What Civ does do in the broadest sense is facilitate the modeling of the rise (and fall if one loses) of a major civilization so quickly that the entire experience can be had in a single session.

And it models that wrong too. Few of the real causes for the decline of an empire are modelled in Civ. Civ4 is actually a little better at this, as overexpansion can collapse your economy and research, letting other powers invade you, but it fails on most of the other counts.

In this process, it models population growth, technological advance, international relations, military conflict, and even macroeconomic stewardship.

And it models those incorrectly too. Civ's model of population growth doesn't allow any sort of food trade, but more importantly it's fundamentally Malthusian (which is a demonstrably incorrect model of human population growth). Civ's model of technological advance is laughable. Civ's diplomacy has always been weak, except maybe in MP (which doesn't really count, because almost ANY game can feature great diplomacy in MP). Civ's model of military conflict is designed entirely around gameplay concerns, and really doesn't make sense if you try to map it on to real-world conflict. And the "macroeconomic stewardship" in civ amounts to moving a slider. The slider doesn't even have any second-order effects, which makes it completely unlike the real-life sliders (e.g. the Fed rate).

It does force compromises between taxation, innovation, and cultural expansion.

So what? It doesn't force anywhere near the same compromise that is required in real life. Forcing "a" compromise means it's a good game, not that it's a good simulator.

It does reflect the impact of various broad political, social, and economic policies on human endeavors.

Yep, that it does! Pacifist religions generate more Great People, and only Nationalist countries can draft. Without castes, we're limited in the number of artists we can have, and under monarchies the military makes people happy (but not in police states). Only democracies with universal suffrage can spend extra money to get projects finished quicker. Oh, and serfs build roads faster than slaves.

However, it does let players make a choice like, "my commercial sector is weakening, so I'll stop ordering university development and start building banks in my largest cities,"

How can you say that with a straight face after just claiming Civ is an economic simulator? Do you think anyone has ever faced the choice between building universities and banks? Or more abstractly, the choice between allocating physical production towards research or the financial sector?

The fact that the choices made in the game are not perfectly parallel to the expectations of "realism" as articulated so far in this thread is no more a valid criticism than complaining that the game does not dispatch formally attired secretaries to hand out reports as printed documents.

STRAWMAN!

No one has ever said it has to be perfect. It just has to be based on reality. It's not. The fundamentals of the Civ economy are based entirely on gameplay concerns, and look absurd from the POV of an economic simulator.

The very shallow perspective might involve thinking like, "WTF?!? Organized religion gives me additional hammers? Are my people worshiping John Henry now!?!" The deeper perspective is more like, "by uniting my people under one official religion, they will converge more harmoniously when convened for purposes of construction or military training."

That's some of the thickest bull**** I've ever read, and I'm in a philosophy course right now. The hilarious part is that your "deeper perspective" sounds as ridiculous as the shallow one! Try saying it out loud without laughing.

I'm not going to deal with the rest of it. I think the foundations of your crazy theory have been so thoroughly debunked that you can't possibly rescue the conclusion.

[Kuciwalker]

By the way, just to get one thing clear: I troll, but I never actually defend positions I don't believe are correct. And I honestly think your theory is ridiculous.

[Wiglaf]

Yep, that it does! Pacifist religions generate more Great People, and only Nationalist countries can draft. Without castes, we're limited in the number of artists we can have, and under monarchies the military makes people happy (but not in police states). Only democracies with universal suffrage can spend extra money to get projects finished quicker. Oh, and serfs build roads faster than slaves.

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

However, to see that meaning and get at that use, one must reach beyond negativity for the sake of negativity and demonstrate at least an average teenager's capacity for comprehension.

You're quite pompous, aren't you? Someone must have hit a nerve in this intellectual's noggin.

The game offers no complicated economic concerns. The dilemmas it does offer are contrived and have little to no basis in reality.

Stop arguing that this is a complex economic simulator. That is just weird.

[Kataphraktoi]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Oh my god. I'm sorry, snoopy, but damn.

I gotta agree

Now normally i consider kuciwalker etc to be the trolls here but this, just is nuts....

Snoopy\Mr Intellectual...you should probably stop while your ahead, or shall i say, not even more behind

What Civ does do in the broadest sense is facilitate the modeling of the rise (and fall if one loses) of a major civilization so quickly that the entire experience can be had in a single session. In this process, it models population growth, technological advance, international relations, military conflict, and even macroeconomic stewardship. It may not dignify nonsense like "tax cuts always create growth," so I can see why it might be objectionable to some. Heck, it even suggests rampant industrialization unaccompanied by sufficient pollution controls can degrade the usefulness of land. How dare it make such assertions so blatantly unrealistic! (. . . to dittoheads at least. )

Quite frankly CiV4 is so laughably simple i cant imagine what you would think when confronted with a real civilization simulator. You may as well think a scarecrow is a good simulation of the human body as think CiV4 is a simulator of anything-it may be able to hold a certain shape and wear a hat, but its not even close.