An intellectual's review

[Adam Weishaupt]

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

[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.

Saving face is all that is left for some...

[Kuciwalker]

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.

[Kuciwalker]

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.

[Kuciwalker]

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.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
If I cared about face I wouldn't bother posting in threads like this.

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.

Now what would be useful is to explain why you do post in these threads. Something positive for a change

[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. 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

[ZEE]

...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 pieceâ„¢

[wodan11]

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!

So you're saying IRL that war weariness doesn't have an impact on the economy?

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

I did. I see quite a few unsupported bald statements such as the one you just made about war weariness.

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.

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.

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.)

Probably a good idea. Sometimes I get confused before I have my coffee and think I'm on CFC.

Wodan

[Kataphraktoi]

You people really do have a deep compelling need to be in the right and thus remain parrots, dont you

[Wiglaf]

So you're saying IRL that war weariness doesn't have an impact on the economy?

Civ says it certainly doesn't. If you've got the Statue of Zeus, that is.

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.

Everything in Civ is an artifical game construct, that is what you need to sit down and realize.

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.

You're not smart, you're arrogant. Go away.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
You're not smart, you're arrogant. Go away.

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!

[snoopy369]

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.

[guermantes]

//
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

[Jaybe]

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.