42 turns left?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11

BTW, SDI violates the SALT II treaty, if i am not mistaken. I think it was that one, that limits strategic missile defence to Moscow for the Russians and norad-hq for the US.

You're thinking of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was signed in 1972 and which America withdrew from in 2002 after giving the required six months notice.

If life were a Civ IV game, I would view America, India, and China as the three civs with clear potential to win. China and India have huge leads in population, but they do not currently have the city and tile improvements they need to make good use of that advantage. They've also been plagued in the past by poor choices of civics. (It's hard to be sure exactly how well their recent changes in civics are working.) If either one does a good job of overcoming these deficiencies, there is plenty of time left to pull ahead.

The U.S. is third in population, but has done a much better job than India and China of building city and tile improvements to make effective use of its population. It also has the most late-game wonders. It's ahead of India and China in the technological race, and either ahead of or equal to all of its other rivals. And no other major civ has a clear advantage over the U.S. in city and tile improvements to make up for being smaller than the U.S.

Thus far, I've been able to come up with four scenarios where someone other than America, India, or China might win.

1) America becomes complacent and starts making serious mistakes, and India and China don't live up to their potential. (Some would argue that America is already in the process of making some serious mistakes.)

2) Someone else gets back-to-back golden ages, and America, India, and China can't use golden ages of their own to offset that advantage.

3) Someone else decides to pursue a conquest or domination victory, and neither America nor an alliance of other powers intervenes to stop them before it's too late.

4) Major use of nuclear weapons cripples America, and India and China either don't play well enough to use their population advantages or are also involved in the nuclear exchange.

[Unimatrix11]

Oh, i didnt know that, about the US withdrawing from the treaty - thx for the info, nbarclay.

BTW: I hope noone here is really regarding world politics as a game, cause that would be a dangerous attitude, most of the major villians of history seem to have adopted.

[Heraclitus]

What do you think the next Hitler is lurking on Civ4 forums?


Come to think of it...
Heil Hera! sounds nice

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
3. Different civs, different values - maybe it´s good for china, and its people, that it is not emancipated... imagine they´d all be materilsitic individualists as we in the ´western world´ are. In fact that might bring us all down quicker than any military they could field...

I have two words to respond to that: Tiananmen Square. I can't say how interested the Chinese people might or might not be in adopting a culture that is as materialistic as America's. But people don't have to be as materialistic as the typical current-day American to want emancipation.

I can see a lot of room for other societies to believe that America goes too far in emphasizing freedom over responsibility. But when it is clear that a society is placing arbitrary, artificial limits on some people's freedom and opportunities in order for others to be better off at their expense, it is ridiculous to try to excuse the situation on a basis of different societies having different values. If the people who are forced to sacrifice for the benefit of others don't like the system, the system is unfair and oppressive regardless of how much the people who benefit from the unfairness and oppression might like it.

In Civ, we can adopt Slavery, Serfdom, or Caste System without worrying about anyone being hurt. But in the real world, those are all systems that willfully hurt some people in order to make others better off. That makes them morally indefensible no matter what differences there might be in different cultures.

[Heraclitus]

But people dosen't china officaly have empancipation? Its just runing nationhood and police state with it.

[Unimatrix11]

You know, morality, at least how i see it, is somehow like a game of civ: Whats right depends a whole lot on the situation. I regard it as a bit simplistic to think in a pattern of ´anything different than what we have now is inferior and immoral´.

Take serfdom: Yeah, the landlord could do with his subjects pretty much what ever he liked. In practice tho, since he depended on them, he rarely went too far with it. On the other side, the serf had to, well, serf. But that is not much different to paying the rent, today. In turn he could be pretty sure, that he wouldnt get evicted or loose ´his´ job (land). Nowadays people get hired and fired - it´s more free, but also less secure. That also extents to the side of the landlord. He was the lord, by inheritate right - he hardly was able to go bancrupt or be bought out of business by some competitor (and that has dramatic impacts on society, which to examine could fill a whole book, i guess). So: serfdom may or may not be the system one would wish to live in, but it certainly is ´defensible´.

I dont know enough about the caste system to comment on it. And, yeah, slavery, tho it seems it did serf a purpose, too, and was at its time the most efficient way to get things done (a point many bring in favor of capitalism, today), i can not work around stating it is very unfair to say the least.

But in any society exercised by mankind so far, it seems there have been masters and, uhhh, well, others (even those who called themselves ´socialist´ or even ´communist´) - it seems when mankind lives in bigger societies (e.g. than families), unfairness must occur.

And for the Tiananmen-massacre: Any society (and esp. its leaders) fights for its ongoing existence. It was a tragedy, a horrible decision to react in this manner, which was way too harsh. But when the hippies tried to change america, they got the stick, too, didnt they ? When the nuclear waste transports roll through Germany, tens of thousands try to block its way - and pay for it. To oppose the authority comes at a price. Those students paid the ultimate price - and achieved nothing really. Thats sad - but it was the risk they were willing to take, if they knew what they did.

On the other hand, who knows what China would be like today if things had turned out differently. My guess is, even tho it lost many of its best heads there maybe, it would not be so well lead as it is today, well on its way to superpower status, economically booming, slowly introducing freedom as the economy allows for it. What happens if freedom is introduced without corresponding economical advances, can be seen in Russia. I´d think stating that China would be pretty much like that is a valied guess on what would have happened if things had turned out differently on Tiananmen Square.

[LzPrst]

china has emancipation. it is not a caste system society. it's people are not tied to feudal lords as in serfdom (arguably) and they are certainly not slaves. under the extremely meager and simplified options in civ, china has emancipation.

and tianeman square has nothing to do with emancipation. democracies occasionally wack a few protesters as well.

[Nohbody8]

Originally posted by LzPrst
and tianeman square has nothing to do with emancipation. democracies occasionally wack a few protesters as well.

Democracies don't use modern armor to "wack a few protesters".

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Nohbody8


Democracies don't use modern armor to "wack a few protesters".

emancipation != Democracy

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
You know, morality, at least how i see it, is somehow like a game of civ: Whats right depends a whole lot on the situation. I regard it as a bit simplistic to think in a pattern of ´anything different than what we have now is inferior and immoral´.

I regard it as simplistic to presume that anyone who has standards is adopting the attitude, "anything different than what we have now is inferior and immoral." There are at least a few of us who are willing to look intelligently and critically at all societies, including our own, and to compare the advantages and drawbacks of different kinds of societies in an intelligent, thoughtful way.

The reason why I am critical of slavery, serfdom, and caste systems is that they deliberately impose arbitrary limits on people's opportunities based on nothing more than the accident of what family they were born into. If your parents were slaves, you are stuck being a slave. If your parents were serfs, you are stuck being a serf. If your parents were members of a low caste, you are stuck doing the kinds of work assigned to that caste. The result is a horrible stink of the wealthy and powerful deliberately preventing other people from being able to compete with themselves and their descendants for positions of wealth and power. I view that as an inexcusable abuse of power unless the people who set up the system are willing to draw lots for what position they and their descendants will be assigned.

Note that there are actually some limited forms of slavery, such as slavery as a punishment for crimes or slavery as a way of taking care of people who are too lazy or irresponsible to manage their own lives, that can be defended as fair. But I doubt that such a system, operated in a fair way, could produce enough slaves to fit the Slavery civic in Civ IV.

[Heraclitus]

The above is not completley true of slavery. Well except the US brand of it that had some cast elemnts... I mean freed slaves were not that rare in ancient Rome or Greece. Most of your criticism is correct. But mind you the cast system is a nearly imperative outcome of any political implementation of a geniune belief in reincarnation.

[wardhali]

Originally posted by Nohbody8
Care to venture a guess as to who is desperate enough to attempt to knock China out of that number one slot Fleme? It's just me but I'm thinking Russia. They can declare war and lure those SoDs into the Motherland. A sudden loss of Chinese units might embolden India to dogpile on and attack from the south. Maybe poor little Genghis Khan, caught in the middle of Russia and China, might wake up some of his mothballed UUs and "let slip the dogs of war". Who knows?

you're forgetting the most important axiom of all, NEVER start a land war in Asia, the Russians would be committing suicide.

[Modo44]

All the Russians have to do is shut down redirect the oil and gas supplies. They've been testing this approach not long ago.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by LzPrst
china has emancipation. it is not a caste system society. it's people are not tied to feudal lords as in serfdom (arguably) and they are certainly not slaves. under the extremely meager and simplified options in civ, china has emancipation.

I'm inclined to agree that China's labor management system fits much better as Emancipation than as any of the other civics in Civ IV. The reason why I brought up Tiananmen Square was not related specifically to the Emancipation civic, but rather was to show an example of how the fact that a nation's leaders like a particular civic does not automatically mean that the civic is what the society as a whole wants. If we allow dictators and oligarchs to use the concept, "Our society has different values," as an excuse to defend whatever kinds of repressive policies they want to adopt, we can end up turning a blind eye toward all sorts of evil.

and tianeman square has nothing to do with emancipation. democracies occasionally wack a few protesters as well.

There is a fundamental difference between the situation in Tiananmen Square and what happens in legitimate democracies. In legitimate democracies, thee are strict rules against the deliberate use of government power to prevent people from being able to protest. There may be occasional violations of those rules, but because they are violations, the protesters can start protesting again once the government officials are ordered to stop the violations. Further, anger over the repressive tactics used by government tend to make the protests stronger than they were before.

If that were what happened in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government would have disavowed the decision to crack down and promised not to repeat it, and the protesters would have been back stronger than ever a few days or weeks later. But what actually happened in Tiananmen Square was very different: a deliberate decision by the government not to allow people to protest its policies.

[Fleme]

Speaking of China, would you consider them to be running State Property? Given the recent development and the fact that foreign corporations are gaining a foothold in the Chinese Market I'd be inclined to say that they've gone from State Property to a mix of it and Free Market. I'd venture a guess and say that the domestic market is highly state regulated but when it comes to foreign corporations and organizations, I wouldn't say so. What's your take?

Religious civic would be Free religion in my opinion, seeing that there are a number of religions practiced and no-one persecuted for their faith and no faith exactly supported by the state more than another and according to Wikipedia there are five religions recognized by the state: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism. I suppose in this sense Confucianism would be considered a philosophy rather than a religion but I'd put it up there with them.

I love it how this turned into a debate. I still think China would win