Player stuck in an eternal Civ II war

Post by invalidOrTaken » Fri, Apr 01, 2016, 7:06 AM UTC

coldcode wrote: post #29

6stringmerc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once participated in a Civ-style, turn-based, global game for a Political Science class, and, full disclosure, I was easily the most controversial person to have participated up to that point. The way the professor set up the game it actually had grade-implicating consequences. The class before mine essentially sat down in a giant circle and worked together to solve the 'built in' problems so they could maximize th…

My high school world history teacher ran a game like this for the class. He booked a whole week for it. After two days we had destroyed the world in a nuclear war. He made us sit quietly in class for the rest of the week as punishment! What a great lesson though in how terrible people can be.

Post by fallingfrog » Fri, Apr 01, 2016, 12:05 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #37

fallingfrog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if the downvotes are fair here. She's making a point worth discussing even if we disagree. I think that even just since the first civ came out, there has been a little bit of cultural shift where maybe people are seeing national power relations in a different way. Where people are less likely to see acquisition of lands for their nation as being quite such a good thing.

The idea that Civilization makes you, personally, a tyrannical psychopath is not worth discussing. There are vaguely related topics like the one you bring up here that might have some conversational value, but the comment with the downvotes is attributing a positively insane level of mind control to video games.

Post by 6stringmerc » Fri, Apr 01, 2016, 2:33 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #36

notahacker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odd thing is that from what I remember of International Relations classes, the core debate in that subfield is whether states avoid cooperating to achieve absolute gains if there's any risk of compromising their relative strength (and whether game theory is the right analytical framework to use, and whether models of iterative games which penalise defectors are the best explanation for why international cooperati…

That's the problem with game theory in politics - unlike hypothetical scenarios, the game never really ends in the real world. There are typically unseen (or ignored) consequences to actions made during engagements, that come back years later. When I said rational actors, I was referring to the students themselves and the scoring system put in front of them. But you're right - it seems odd that a poli sci professor w…

Post by bduerst » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #45

bduerst wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with game theory in politics - unlike hypothetical scenarios, the game never really ends in the real world. There are typically unseen (or ignored) consequences to actions made during engagements, that come back years later. When I said rational actors, I was referring to the students themselves and the scoring system put in front of them. But you're right - it seems odd that a poli sci professor w…

I'm really quite excited to write out the experience, though I have to admit over 10 years have passed so I've got to focus to dredge back up the memories. The 'wiped out, zero points' actually makes the most sense from a pragmatic standpoint. Figuratively speaking, you get zero points when your culture/society/etc is annihilated, wiped out. So there was an incentive to behave in a way to avoid being destroyed. Just…