An intellectual's review

[Blake]

What a nice debate.

Civ can teach economic concepts.

It does not teach the economics of the real world.

But the concepts taught, can be useful in other contexts, such as other games and the game of life.

Once someone boldly told me "Economics is nothing more than the study of scarcity".
If you believe that, then CIV makes a fine economic simulator - at least once you get into advanced strategies were you make real strategic tradeoffs (like training armies at the expense of doing research).

But if you say that Economics means that stuff about labor, buzz phrases, economic schools of thought, etc etc, then yeah, it's not an economic simulator.

Pick your definition and stop arguing.

[couerdelion]

Kuci,

The fat-cross is a game-play issue. Maybe it represents the surrounding area of a city from which that city can draw its strength. Does it represent the real-world?

Not if we compare it to the modern-world where measures like production, food and commerce are not generated locally. But for much of the course of CIV, the link between different cities was much weaker. The output of a city was still quite dependent on the resources it could acquire from its surrounding area. Grain was probably the big exception to this in ancient times because this could at least travel. But I can’t see why the game model is inherently broken because this is not factored into it. The main reason why we have a fat cross is for playability.

The lack of agreement over what constitutes a simulator is largely due to the protagonists fixing their positions too early in the discussion. Personally, I think that the simulator works fine because it is close enough to reality and historically, it seems to follow development fairly well. It’s not the sort of simulator that we would use to run 1000 scenario to see what happens to inflation, output, employment etc for a few reasons.

a) such simulators attempt to model the modern economy and would not be very useful in a world without open trade, freedom to raise capital, copyright protection, etc. In short, for most of the period covered by the game it would be almost completely ineffective
b) to generate a model that would apply in various periods we would need data to generate that model. That data is pretty sparse so we are left with a very speculative model for those periods.
c) to pass the stricter tests for the model to be realistic, it would also be rather complicated. But that would probably consign the game to a small group of “econometric historians” and I doubt it would be fun.

At to this, the probably that you can never please everyone – and some people are just never pleased – and your left with the situation that we have an imperfect simulator here. Chess is also an imperfect war simulator.

Zelda, if I understand what this refers to, is neither an economic or a war simulator. Unless, I have completely misunderstood the point, people here are playing a fantasy game. Granted all games are fantasy to some extent but I think most people would draw a clear line between historical simulator games like Civ and EU and fantasy games. The dividing line sits closer to games like Age of Empires which, while it does contain an element of technological development and has an economic model, seems to me to be much closer to a historical fantasy type of game rather than the simulations were are talking about here.

[Adam Weishaupt]

In fairness, it seems that Kuciwalker is only arguing that the fat cross ceases to be a reasonable element of the model after technologies like railroads and steamships created conditions where imported food was available to typical consumers (rather than atypical consumers like residents in the capitol of an economic superpower or people with a substantial multiple of their society's median income.) Health reflects these changes to some degree, but for me to argue it was a perfect emulation would be just as misleading as to contend there was nothing at all in the game to acknowledge the transition from farmers' markets to supermarkets.

I do find Blake's point intriguing though. There are plenty of self-styled economic simulators that embrace theoretical paradigms and work with real world data drawn from popular statistical indicators. Perhaps there is good work to be done in analysis of specific markets or quantification of human behavior. Yet when the field of theoretical economics reaches out to try and encompass the whole of a dynamic society, the results usually resemble theological argument more than science. Doctrine and dogma wallpaper over enormous gaps in actual knowledge, and sometimes also introduce tremendous distortion into the interpretation of what can be meaningfully measured.

I never contended that Civ's economic model was perfect, but it is well worth reflecting on how far from reality other models tend to be. If I say, "that program has some of the best weather forecasts" because the information is highly accurate over a 72 hour window, I believe that would be a reasonable claim. Perhaps in the far future 72 day forecasts will be attainable through the use of as yet undiscovered techniques. By the same token, saying that Civ features "some of the best elements of a macroeconomic simulator" clearly should be taken in the context of what macroeconomic simulators actually are in our own times, rather than in some hypothetical context in which perfect or near-perfect comprehensive models of large dynamic national economies are thought to exist.

Regards.
Adam Weishaupt

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Blake
What a nice debate.

Civ can teach economic concepts.

It does not teach the economics of the real world.

But the concepts taught, can be useful in other contexts, such as other games and the game of life.

Once someone boldly told me "Economics is nothing more than the study of scarcity".
If you believe that, then CIV makes a fine economic simulator - at least once you get into advanced strategies were you make real strategic tradeoffs (like training armies at the expense of doing research).

But if you say that Economics means that stuff about labor, buzz phrases, economic schools of thought, etc etc, then yeah, it's not an economic simulator.

Pick your definition and stop arguing.

[Kuciwalker]

In fairness, it seems that Kuciwalker is only arguing that the fat cross ceases to be a reasonable element of the model after technologies like railroads and steamships created conditions where imported food was available to typical consumers (rather than atypical consumers like residents in the capitol of an economic superpower or people with a substantial multiple of their society's median income.)

Nope. Good try, but nope. I'm arguing that it's a bad model throughout history, and becomes an especially bad model post-Industrial Revolution.

[Adam Weishaupt]

Oh, well, then you're just being contrary to be contrary, because there isn't really a serious basis for thinking that most meals consumed from 4000 B.C. to 1800 A.D. were harvested hundreds of miles away from the point of consumption. Certainly there was some transportation of food during this time, but the idea that it wasn't mostly about what could be grown in the same region for most of the span of the game is just plain silly.

Regards,
Adam Weishaupt

[Kuciwalker]

Oh, well, then you're just being contrary to be contrary, because there isn't really a serious basis for thinking that most meals consumed from 4000 B.C. to 1800 A.D. were harvested hundreds of miles away from the point of consumption. Certainly there was some transportation of food during this time, but the idea that it wasn't mostly about what could be grown in the same region for most of the span of the game is just plain silly.

Even without large amounts of food trade, it's easy to see that population wasn't too highly correlated with high food production. Large metropolises didn't form because there were good farms nearby; they may have required them, but plenty of other places with good farms didn't have large cities.

[wodan11]

Uhh... is this what you just said Kuci?

Large metropolises required multiple farms

but

Multiple farms did not necessarily mean a large metropolis would arise there.



Wodan

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Adam Weishaupt
Health reflects these changes to some degree, but for me to argue it was a perfect emulation would be just as misleading as to contend there was nothing at all in the game to acknowledge the transition from farmers' markets to supermarkets.

You know, this is a good example to me, what makes civ not be a sim to me: A sim would reveal how the change from farmers´ market to supermarket came about. In civ you just "invent" the supermarket. And this is of course bogus. The change from the feudal to the capitalistic form of production (and this is what finally brought about the supermarket) was (and still is) a painfull and long (not just a turn or two of anarchy) social process. Many of the techs in civ, are not even techs in RL really. Constitution is an obvious one, but i also mean banking for example. In a sim, you would mess around with social parameters (which ideally would be in dynamic interaction with each other and the environment) , the prevailing of a certain status of which over a certain time (or the absence of which, a tendency or whatever) then would result in such social developments that lead to the construction of banking and supermarkets. Now you can say, that all this is abstracted into the tech tree - i find that very dissatisfactory for a sim tho (fine for a game), since i dont consider it valid to throw true technical advantages (like gunpowder or the wheel) in the same bag as social developments (as democracy). A social development is "invented" at the time of its occurance, and thus comes into practice inevitibly and immediately after its "discovery". If you(r people) have discovered gunpowder they can choose to either make guns or not to - if they "discover" democracy, well, they must have tried it, or at least they will want to... now! Likewise with banks - so you know what banking is, but you dont have a single bank in the empire ? How does that work ? So my suggestion for a sim-civ would be to seperate techs from social developements (which would allow for ancient democracies too btw). Another one would be, to have all (or most) improvements build automatically, depending on what your people "feel" they need to build, which again would depend on social parameters... Third one would be to have it done in much more incremental steps. So instead of 1 bank for a city, there would be a, say, 34% coverage of banking services in the city (rather: region or state) which could grow and wane in little steps. Fourth would be to get rid of the funny idea, that your people are more happy, the more different religions you have in your empire - the contrary is often the truth in RL (unless you wanna corelate violence to happyness).

Kuci´s point about population accumulation in a certain location also reveals "flaws" of the model, when compared to reality (not flaws if you look at it as a game and no more than that).

And there are, in my eyes, countless flaws like that. Observatory +25% science ? Of course thats just for game-balance and the thing could also be labeled "anatomic labarotory" or anything that would somehow fit into the time, where game-designers "felt" a science-boost would be reflecting history without any cost on game-balance. So the approach is rather: "hmm, lets have a science-boosting building in the early renaissance era. lets see... +25% ? Yeah that fits neatly with the libs and unis (the same amount)... now, which name do we pick for it ?..." - You see, how "unsimmy" that is ? But i´d BET it was done this way (roughly), rather than "measuring" the "science-increase" of the era and its correlation to ANY new building/infrastructure at the time. As you stated yourself, adam, this is not even possible due to lack of data. But the point is: Civ doesnt even try - it has no ambition to be simulator of any kind. It´s purpose is to have educated fun, not to educate in a fun way. Where those two meet, is my out-most line for defining a sim.

[Adam Weishaupt]

It may be that cities formed for reasons other than access to food supplies, but it can hardly be said that tremendous amounts of agriculture took place for the sheer fun of farm work. Obviously food was being made with the idea that people would eat it. By the same token, cities do not grow large in Civilization because farms spring up out of their own accord. The intention to expand a city is the driving force behind Worker efforts to improve food production as well as the allocation of population points to tiles with high food output.

If your chief complaint about this aspect of the model is that food drives the growth of cities, then you are overlooking the fact that it is actually the growth of cities that drives agricultural development. Even if a player neglects all possible micromanagement, automated farming and working of farmland is still something the model attributes to human efforts rather than spontaneous natural events. It may be that the results of farming efforts are population increases, but that does not mitigate the fact that the farming efforts themselves are also a result of city growth. In fact, as with reality, this linkage occurs whether it is the result of a coherent national plan or the organic growth of cities lacking strict oversight.

Regards,
Adam Weishaupt

P.S. To Unimatrix11, I would suggest not taking things quite so literally. "Technology" is actually a broad term that remains meaningful even when it includes advances in fields like civics or economics. Even more importantly, it is clearly unfair to characterize Civ's model as if building a Bank meant literally building a single bank.

As I see it, researching a new technology means both developing essential ideas and establishing some cultural basis for their use. For example, in antiquity the physician Galen managed to organize a proper hospital complete with its own food service as well as procedures like the boiling of surgical instruments prior to their use. However, ideas like that would not catch on to the point where an entire civilization could benefit from hospital care until much later. Acquiring the Technology "Medicine" indicates not merely having a Galen in your midst, but having academics throughout your society embrace those ideas and popularize them to the point of widespread usefulness.

Likewise, building a Bank would imply that the entire region encompassed by a city's influence would benefit from a sort of financial infrastructure that it did not previously possess. With only a Marketplace, the presumption would be that commerce in the entire area would tend to take place with a lower degree of institutional support. The completion of a Bank is a way of modeling the advance from moneychangers' tables and widespread haggling to a much greater use of currency along with widespread use of checking, credit, etc. Likewise, Observatory or Laboratory also does not represent a single building, but regional development to the point where researches in the area would tend to have access to more advanced facilities than are implied by the existence of a University.

It is an approximation, but I fail to see how the approximation invalidates the notion that it is a simulation. What is at issue here is if the activity simulates economic activity -- not whether or not it rises to some standard that, perhaps you might also admit, would make the experience pointlessly cumbersome. The key I believe is to recognize that Banks, Observatories, et al. represent development, rather than representing a single installation.

P.P.S. As an additional afterthought, I do understand the point about how something like Banking development happens "all at once" in a Civ city, whereas in reality banks would spring up little by little and people would become depositors and debtors little by little as well. Yet these sorts of changes are not necessarily smooth and linear either. To some degree, there is a question of traction. When pioneering a new way of doing things in a particular region, there tend to be losses before there are gains. Civ's "build it and then you get the full advantage" approach is a simple one, but would mucking about with fractional returns on these things really be an improvement, particularly when there is this issue of turning points as institutional change crosses thresholds of usefulness in reality?

[Unimatrix11]

In my perception, farming occurs when:

a) the population is hungry or

b) farming presents an easier method of acquiring food than any other (fishing, hunting, gathering) or

c) food can be sold to other places at a higher price (per workhour) than anything else produceable at least by a part of the population.

So there is either the need (a), the effort-reduction (b), or the profit-opportunity (c). The planned agriculturing of a region around a city with the intention of having that city grow, the whole process being "artificially" promoted and executed by a central organization (eg the government, or whoever you play in civ) is rather the exception in RL, but the common occurance in Civ. The civ-model in this instance shows inconsistencies with reality not only with the advent of global transportation in refrigeration, but also with "free market". In fact, later civics like democracy and free market should curtail your abbilities (remember civI ? you couldnt declare war if you were a democracy - annoying and not very realistic, but still the right direction, for a sim, i´d say).

You say:

"It may be that the results of farming efforts are population increases, but that does not mitigate the fact the the farming efforts themselves are also a result of city growth."

Well, the former is the line of thought when playing civ. Build farms so the city may grow. The later is in fact the one closer to real life: "We need more forms to feed all of our citizen (or import it if thats cheaper)"

[Adam Weishaupt]

Again this seems to rest on excessive and unjustified literalism. It is true that the player represents the leader of a civilization. Yet it is more reasonable (particularly in a 6000 year game played mostly in a context where advanced medical science is stipulated as absent) to conceptualize the player's role as a sort of Zeitvolk (as in Zeitgeist, but referring to a people rather than an era.)

It is unfair to presume that every action taken by the player is a mandate from the top tier of government, and likewise it would be unfair to assume that automated behaviors are always the result of some sort of grass roots movement. If a criticism of the meaningfulness of the simulation rests on assumptions like those, then that criticism is more a function of how the model is interpreted than any explicit component of rule set.

Regards,
Adam Weishaupt

P.S. As an additional thought, it is probably worth noting that Civics are not intended to be absolutes. A nation could easily maintain a free market paradigm while operating a universal pension system or even providing universal health care. A Communist Civ could be extreme in the implementation of state property or it might only nationalize enterprises exceeding a certain size as measured by employees or revenue. As far as Democracies going to war, I concede that an informed and thoughtful electorate would never support any regime that engaged in a war of aggression. If someone can point out an example of an informed and thoughtful electorate, then the assertion holds . . . but it is hard to be a realist without also taking a negative view of that prospect.

[puddnhead]

I have not been able to read through all this due to lack of time/endurance, and also a feeling things were going downhill quickly by the end of the first page (mostly due to two posters whose username began with K ...)

I just wanted to thank Adam for an intersting review -- not godly, awe-inspiring perfection in literature, no, but still something with some things worth reading -- and also to add to the person on p.1 talking about Civ vs sims, and suggested Sim Earth and Tropico as more sim like -- that may be true (I actually own both, but am just not going to make a public judgement since that's not my point), but if you believe that is true, you probalby want to look at 1701 AD (and it's predecessors 1602 and 1503 perhaps, though I have not tried them). This game came out maybe a year ago, and did not get the attention it deserves. It is definitely a much more realistic simulation than Civ, with more human timespans and realistic economic model, and emhasizes warfare less. Serioiusly, if you are looking for something halfway between the two Sid Meier classics Civilization and Colonization, check out 1701, it's probably cheap to get at this point. Personally I prefer Civ IV, but I'm not looking for realistic sim either, just engaging strategy, so it could be somethign as abstract as Chess for all I care (but others apparently do).

Thanks again Adam.

p.s. IGN AD 1701 Review

[Unimatrix11]

Yeah, okay, but even with this abstract idea of a Zeitvolk (time-people would be literal translation), and i assume you mean some sort of "mentality", i have an issue with how civ throws that into the game as well. You can always just change the mentality of your people within a couple turns (changing civics from free religion to theocracy for example) and what has been before carries no further importance in the mind of your subjects. No gradual shift from one to the other either. It goes: "BAM - today is totally different than yesterday"... Happens too in RL but is certainly not the normal thing. Just remember the struggle of devine right (another one of those "techs") vs. secular rule (Canossa and the like) - that lasted for about half a millenium in germany (until Bismarck ended it for good actually). No "BAM" here. Everything from Canossa to the Kulturkampf is simply left out. Compare that to the EU model...

Let me ask you this: have you ever played any of the paradox interactive titles, like Europa Universalis or Victroria ? I think their models are far more sophisiticated than civs. They also only span 350 (EU) or 100 (vic) years, but thats why they can offer a far more sim-like approach, which is also served by the fact, that in these games the role you obtain is a bit more defined and clear-cut. It is still not the king really, but very close to it. So you just know what to interprete as gras-root-movement and what is planned by the government. It also features social parameters... In case you dont know these games, you really should have a look at them - i think you would like them. (Civ is great of course, too, but for different reasons than its accuracy to history)

[Unimatrix11]

Thanks for the recommendations, pudd ! Actually i did play 1503 back then and didnt like it too much. Just taste... Maybe i should give it a shot... The big plus of Tropico is, apart of its cool simish engine and concept, its atmosphere: Its not only realistic but also funny ! So cool to be adressed as "el presidente", when being informed that "some of your citizens may be calling for an election next year" which, you already know you will have to pull a major fraud on in order to win it... time to increase the military salaries so the likely post-election coup can be contained... or maybe try to win it honestly and give a tax-cut ? See - the fun is: You know who you are in this game in just staying who you are is the challenge...