An intellectual's review

[East Street Trader]

I cannot claim to have been much stimulated by the economic modelling in Civ but I am very much stimulated (and admire) the way the advances and the various forms of government mirror life.

The proposition that holding an election in Iraq would create a democracy is a proposition that I suspect almost anyone could readily doubt. But the doubts of a Civ player will be stronger and more easily articulated. Because of the excellent modelling in the game.

The fact that the modelling is also well balanced to achieve satisfying game play (taken together with the artistic input which achieves immersion) seems to me to be the real (and very substantial) achievement of the game.

I have no real doubt that computer games are now, and have for quite some time been, an art form with as much or more complexity as film. Civ and a number of the other early games will come to be regarded in much the way that Battleship Potemkin or the Chaplin films are regarded.

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Also, why the hell would anyone on this site be reading Civ reviews? Are you going to learn something new that you haven't figured out in tens to hundreds of hours of playtime?

Now you've met Kuci.

Different take on Civ for me. Nice to see a fresh angle.

[Brizey]

One of the most important class of decisions you make while playing Civ is economic: build immediately useful stuff now, or build stuff that enhances your ability to build useful stuff later. Spend or invest. Three battleships now, or ten battleships later, etc. Since these decisions are played out in the game, it is a simulator of sorts.

As a model, its underlying mathematics are intentionally simple (integers, etc.) to make it playable rather than accurate or complete. I think they did a great job of coming up with a model that is very simple and deterministic as you zero in (one food and two hammers or two food and one hammer?) yet complex enough to SEEM like it is non-deterministic to a human player when larger peices of the system are examined (which will net me a stronger ecomomy in twenty turns--building a shrine or popping a tech with my GP?). I have always felt that this aspect of Civ is what makes it such a great game. Its a simulator with simple inputs and complex output, and a lot of fun.

And I think we need to leave the unecessarily negative posts to the car and sports forums.

[Locutus]

Re: Re: An intellectual's review

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
By the way, Locutus, this opening sucks. For one, I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether "What You Should Think" sounds pretentious; you certainly don't need to tell me what it sounds like, especially since you don't seem to follow up on that spin with the rest of the review. Also, "a blogger known simply as X" is a bit redundant. Is it really so notable that someone on the Internet isn't going by his full legal name?

You are of course welcome to your opinion but I had my reasons for writing what I did:

1) I felt simply opening with "In the blog What You Should Think" was a bit bland and wanted to spice it up a little. People usually decide within the first sentence or two whether they want to continue reading an article so I'd better say something that stands out right away. You could argue about how true the statement is or how appropriate for me to comment on it, but since I got even you and Wiglaf (not the easiest people to please ) to not only read the whole thing but to even comment on it I would say I succeeded one way or another

2) If you're a regular reader of our review reports you should know that we usually try to credit the author by full name if we can (which is almost always the case for reviews, this was a bit on an exception -- hence the comment). In fact, that's generally true for all of our stories, not just the reviews: we provide as much information on our sources as we think is relevant. Anyone working in a field where you deal with information a lot knows that the source is usually as important, if not more so, than the information itself. So even if we're not exactly hard-hitting journalists we feel that some due diligence on our behalf to investigate and reveal our sources is important. If a review has been written by someone on the payroll of a developer or publisher many might view it in a different light than when it was written by a known staunch critic (and if you think no publisher would sink that low, think again). Either way, even if you don't particularly care about the source we at least provide the info (or comment on the lack of it) -- let the reader be the judge on whether it matters.

As for why we bother on reporting on reviews at all, we don't only aim our news reporting at die-hard civvers who've been here for years and pre-ordered the special edition of every version of the game, but at everyone with some interest in Civ. Some people may be on the fence about whether or not a particular game or XP is worth buying -- we get threads on that from time to time, or from people who just bought the game recently and have questions (and you see even more of that on CFC) -- not everyone buys something the day it comes out... Also, the people who were actively involved in making the game (which aren't just Firaxians but also ~200 testers from Apolyton, CFC and other Civ sites) care about this stuff as well. I personally still read every review I can get my hands on to see if it comments on anything I was directly involved with -- I'm vain that way

And this review in particular (if you can even call it that) was interesting because it's not like any other, it has a different angle than anything you'll find on the likes of GameSpot or IGN. But this was the first vanilla-Civ4 review we've reported on in a long, long time: we generally don't bother anymore when a game is more than 6 months old or so, unless, like this one, it has some kind of hook that sets it apart. And from the reactions here it's clear that at least some people appreciated the article (as did I myself, even if I don't necessarily agree with every single point).

If you don't care about reviews because you already have the game, that's perfectly understandable. Then just don't read those news items -- it's usually clear from either the title or the first sentence what they're about...

[snoopy369]

Three words: Google search rank ...

[Jaybe]

My main complaint with the idea of Civ being a macroeconomic simulator was partially resolved with BtS's random events. SH** HAPPENS IRL, and Civ has "too much" emphasis on being an enjoyable game.

Scrap, players even complain that an AI civ gets a negative attitude towards them from something they have no control over!

--
I appreciated the What You Should Think review with the different perspective it took. The most meaningful review I've read.

[Wiglaf]

This is not an intelligent review. It is pompous and full of inanities like this one:

Even more than medical practice, I believe stewardship of a national economy more an art informed by science than a pure science.

Dear god. This belongs in a girl's diary about her high school economics class, not a videogame review.

To address the terrain issue, it is worthwhile to consider workforce allocation from a perspective that offers a finite menu of options in balancing agriculture, industry, and commerce. Terrain productivity values accomplish this while also reflecting the role geography plays in constraining a region's prospects for productivity. The system is further enhanced by factors like economic development (i.e. improvements,) notable resources, and specialists.

Indeed. Bioshock is also a complicated microeconomic simulator. It's a first person shooter that forces the player to pick and choose different abilities. It's sort of like buying them. And then there's things that, like, complicate his decision, like enemies and stuff.

Bioshock

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Three words: Google search rank ...

Perhaps a few more words for us old fellows.

RJM

[Jaybe]

Indeed. Bioshock is also a complicated microeconomic simulator

Gad, Wiglaf! Not only do you seem to love to hate (and raise the ire in others), but you can't even keep your micro/macro straight!

[Wiglaf]

And you think I made a mistake why? He acts like an idiot about macro, I apply his retarded logic to micro.

Deus Ex is also a good microeconomics simulator btw You buy things and sell them From suppliers

[snoopy369]

Wiggie, I think you have a distinct lack of understanding of the true meaning of "macroeconomics" (or just "economics")...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Kuci's at the age where people think they know everything...

Actually, we do know everything, old people just forget a bunch of stuff 'cause you're all senile...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by wodan11
Zounds, Kuciwalker, did you get up on the wrong side of bed? Not only have you only negative things to say, you say it about multiple people.

I'm just getting warmed up, buddy. Though, this is the Civ4 forum so I have to worry about Solver...

Finding only criticism in someone's effort make it seem as though your goal is simply to be critical. That your goal is to shoot down the effort and undermine it.

What's wrong with being critical again?

Criticism

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by snoopy369
Kuci's at the age where people think they know everything...

Actually, we do know everything, old people just forget a bunch of stuff 'cause you're all senile...

Nah, that's just all the beer we drank while in college.

Some people, of course, wouldn't be familiar with either beer or college.

Wodan

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Adam Weishaupt
The more someone is convinced they have a "realistic" macroeconomic simulator, the more likely you are to be dealing with one of those ideological nuts giving economists a bad name.

Who claimed to have a realistic simulator?

The real question to ask about macroeconomic simulators is whether or not the simulator is meaningful.

And for Civ that answer is decidely no.

Civilization's economic components are meaningful in important ways. If you treat it like a fast food cash register -- looking only at the pictures without thinking about what lies beneath -- of course it seems meaningless. To address the terrain issue, it is worthwhile to consider workforce allocation from a perspective that offers a finite menu of options in balancing agriculture, industry, and commerce. Terrain productivity values accomplish this while also reflecting the role geography plays in constraining a region's prospects for productivity.

It reflects all of that wrongly though. It has no actual correlation with reality!

Even more than medical practice, I believe stewardship of a national economy more an art informed by science than a pure science.

Medicine is a science... and stewardship of a national economy is politics, not art.

In other words, even reality probably would not accommodate the notion of "realism" I suspect afflicts one or two participants in this thread. Financial surveys, government reports, and capital market indices may not be as accessible as the information in Civ (and they certainly aren't as much fun to assess,) but they too are flawed abstractions that never go beyond crudely approximating the diverse intricacies of any actual large nation's economy.

On the other hand, that's actually what they approximate. The mechanisms in civ have nothing at all to do with reality, they're entirely based on gameplay concerns. That's why they're fun.