Dumb website claims Civ is imperialist and excuses colonization.

[Lorizael]

Civ is weak apologism. If you want hardcore, try the boardgame Puerto Rico, where you win by importing "colonists" (brown tokens) to work your sugar plantations to make enough money to buy fancy buildings.

[ricketyclik]

History is imperialist. Civ is inspired by history.

I agree. Playing Civ peeled the scales off my eyes with respect to understanding history, right up to the present day.

[Elok]

Civ is weak apologism. If you want hardcore, try the boardgame Puerto Rico, where you win by importing "colonists" (brown tokens) to work your sugar plantations to make enough money to buy fancy buildings.

Did Catan ever come out with an "inconvenient locals" expansion pack?

Also, https://apolyton.net/forum/miscellan...s-of-palestine just for old times' sake.

[Lorizael]

I think there is some variant or expansion where you actually conquer stuff. I've always liked that in basic Catan, military is not much more than a dick-measuring contest.

...

More seriously, we have to find a way to come to terms with the fact that history is awful. There are no excuses for what was done, but we also can't change the past.

[BeBMan]

I'd argue that we should be aware of the awful things, but also of the moves that led to things getting less awful..../wise ass

[ricketyclik]

It's my contention that imperialism is with us still, in the form of the worst aspects of globalisation and corporations.

While it was waning for a brief period in the latter half of the twentieth century, it's now on the ascendancy. The "third way", while initially yielding its promised dividends to the masses, has revealed itself to be a shill for the powerful, who were playing the long game all along.

[Broken_Erika]

The site also says Star Trek also perpetuates imperialism.

https://imperialglobalexeter.com/2018/06/14/to-boldly-go-adventure-and-empire-in-star-trek/

[Lorizael]

...except that Star Trek actually bothered to challenge its obvious imperialist trappings, with the Prime Directive, the Maquis storyline, the occupation of Bajor, and the Borg and Dominion showing extreme imperialism in all its ugliness.

[BeBMan]

The site also says Star Trek also perpetuates imperialism.
https://imperialglobalexeter.com/201...-in-star-trek/

Didn't read it (yet), but I hope it does mention the universal translator as an example of cultural imperialism.

[Lorizael]

Indeed. You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.

[Elok]

More seriously, we have to find a way to come to terms with the fact that history is awful. There are no excuses for what was done, but we also can't change the past.

For me, the difficulty lies not in that problem itself (I take it as all but axiomatic that humanity is and probably always will be awful, as you know), but in accepting that we're terrible without taking that fact as in some sense normative. That is, it's easy for me to look at the conquest of the Americas and say, "well, yes, given the power differential that was inevitable," but hard to so without undergoing a subtle mental shift that views the terrible as business-as-usual, nbd.

[Elok]

Also, I do like that Catan is non-military, yes. My favorite part of Civ was always seeing all my cities laid out in tidy anal-retentive lines--a sort of meditative digital garden. This would seem to indicate that SimCity would be a better fit for me, but I was always driven into a rage by their nonsensical whining: "We need X public service! And Y! And Z! Hey, wait, why are our taxes rising?" Little ****s.

[BeBMan]

I looked into the Civ article...wasn't it - in the good old days - a rather right wing/conservative thing to declare that video games are bad?

This site seems to be the leftish version of it, pushing all the right buttons for a certain audience (imperialism, eurocentrism - and hell who knows whatever -ism I missed). Which could be all important topics surely, but the whole drive of those articles seems to be to check everything whether the depiction of history in there is in line with how they feel stuff should or should not be depicted.

At the end he suggests that a certain depiction in games (basically the standard 4X approach) would perpetuate "Eurocentric colonialism" in reality. I guess if they only had better board games from ca. 1500 over the next couple centuries history would have taken a completely different course....

[ZEE]

Civ is an obsolete, boring-ass, run by a **** company-ass, horrible game with the audacity to slap the name of Sid on their cover, trash-ass game.

Personally I hope Firaxis goes out of business and their board of directors gets arrested for fraud and corruption.

[Felch]

Civ is weak apologism. If you want hardcore, try the boardgame Puerto Rico, where you win by importing "colonists" (brown tokens) to work your sugar plantations to make enough money to buy fancy buildings.

My roommate once won a game of that dark horse style, just cranking out masses of corn for sale.

It's the sort of strategy that works best when the other players are high as **** and not paying any attention.