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>The other problem is that the AI fights total wars by default. It will never engage in a limited conflict. This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a

>The other problem is that the AI fights total wars by default. It will never engage in a limited conflict. This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare. >Or that one possibly victory condition in a game of Civilization would be to maximize a global human development index of some kind When I was a kid I played a strategy game on the original Mac. I think it was called Balance of Power. The game punished you when war broke out. It didn't encourage it. The game ended if you and the Soviets got into a nuclear conflict. Why can't more games have rational goals instead of just being a more advanced form of Pacman?

jonnathanson 14y ago
"This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare." Agreed 100%. To me, it seems silly -- not to mention cynical and fatalistic -- that the sole purpose of diplomacy in Civilization games is to add a strategic dimension to warmaking. That's what it is. The game is basically in a constant state of war, and peace only exists if something is going wrong: i.e., the powers are (momentarily) too evenly balanced to attack one another, or someone's just biding time to sneak-attack someone else, or everyone's spending a few years recovering from World War XXIV before gearing up for World War XXV. That said, Civlization can still be an immensely fun and rewarding game. It's not the game I want it to be, but I enjoy trying to squeeze every last ounce of emergent gameplay from it. "Why can't more games have rational goals instead of just being a more advanced form of Pacman?" I suspect because there just isn't a big enough market for games of that nature. Maybe there is a handful of us out there. Maybe a relatively small handful, but one that's willing to pay a fair amount for a really great, truly strategic global power game. I dunno. Maybe it's worth organizing, or Kickstarting, or what have you. If any game devs out there are reading this and are interested, know that there's a niche crossing its fingers for you.
- bdunbar 14y ago
  Agreed 100%. To me, it seems silly -- not to mention cynical and fatalistic -- that the sole purpose of diplomacy in Civilization games is to add a strategic dimension to warmaking. Out here in the real world, war is a continuation of politics, by other means. Same thing, really, as your description of Civ II. The goal of diplomacy/warmaking is for one's side to come out ahead of the other. See Clausewitz, Machiavelli.
  - troels 14y ago
    I hope we've come at least a bit further since the renaissance. Diplomacy doesn't have to be a zero-sum game - indeed it rarely is in the real world. War, on the other hand, is very much that. So in that respect, war is the failure of diplomacy, not the continuation of it.
    - gchpaco 14y ago
      War is actually a negative sum game today; even "winning" you lose a lot. It's not clear to me if this was ever different for anything larger than Viking raiding parties, though.
      - tomrod 14y ago
        US-Mexican War, US-Spanish war. US came out far ahead in bt cases, iirc.
        gchpaco 14y ago
        That's still possible in a negative sum game; all negative sum means is that the sum of the benefits to all parties is less than the sum of the costs to all parties. So if say the US hoses the Mexicans but good it can still come out ahead as long as the Mexicans go down hard.
    - bdunbar 14y ago
      I hope we've come at least a bit further since the renaissance. I may not understand your definition of 'further'. People are no smarter than they they were in 1500. There are no new cultural institutions. Our toys are better, but people is still people.
DanBC 14y ago
Balance of Power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game)) The game for PC shipped with a MS Windows runtime environment, for an early version of Windows. (2.x?) I remember it being really hard. (http://pc.ign.com/articles/090/090970p1.html http://pc.ign.com/articles/090/090970p1.html) Such a game made today could be brilliant.
- gbrindisi 14y ago
  > Such a game made today could be brilliant. It has been done: Balance of Power 21st century http://indiegames.com/2009/03/freeware_game_pick_balance_of.html http://indiegames.com/2009/03/freeware_game_pick_balance_of.... Found via the wikipedia page of Chris Crawford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_(game_designer) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_(game_designer)
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  The guy also wrote a book about how the game works, which has some good insights into real geopolitics. Can't find the link, unfortunately, but it was a really good read.
ralfd 14y ago
In Civ 4 the different leaders have personality. Ghandi is peaceful and will never backstab a weak player, Montezuma is batshit insane and lusts for blood, Isabella from Spain is a religious fanatic, Mansa Musa will quickly forget past wars and is happy to make peace to trade techs. A player can also befriend and ally a KI and win jointly. There is a Google Tech Talk from the formet Civ lead programmer about this "Fun AI". In Civ 4 the Vanilla AI doesnt focus that much on winning. ManyAI Mods implement a more total War style and brutal min-max-gaming with huge armies to challenge experienced players. Also Civ 5 abandoned the Civ 4 style of diplomacy and replaced it with "hidden box" and a "Hard AI" which plays to win. It was at release date a huge disappointment of many veteran Civ players.
- stinkytaco 14y ago
  Ghandi always goes for the nukes though. I'm convinced this is an in joke added by the developers of the game to mess with us. Ghandi is one of the most agressive AIs if he views you as a threat.
Impossible 14y ago
Fate of the World (http://fateoftheworld.net/ http://fateoftheworld.net/) is an interesting indie strategy game. You play as a world organization and your goal in the main scenario is to prevent global warming. The problem is, as interesting as the theme is, the base game had serious issues with balance and simply understanding cause and effect, so it was difficult and not always fun (kind of like trying to solve global warming in real life! :)) I still suggest that everyone looking for an interesting take on 4x strategy games check it out. In general board games tend to have much more varied themes and goals than video games, and often have limited direct conflict between players or none at all. Paradox Games (www.paradoxplaza.com) are supposed to be historically accurate, if your main concern is realism. In practice they don't always achieve this goal but they do a better job at it than Civ.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  > Fate of the World (http://fateoftheworld.net/ http://fateoftheworld.net/) is an interesting indie strategy game. Bought it today because of this recommendation. I hate you, Hacker News. ;).
throw_away 14y ago
In the board game Twilight Struggle, a game about the Cold War (& #1 on boardgamegeek.com), you lose if you escalate matters to defcon 1 and cause a nuclear war. A big part of the strategy, though, is knowing how to cause your opponent to inadvertently trigger defcon 1 (http://twilightstrategy.com/2011/12/12/general-strategy-defcon/ http://twilightstrategy.com/2011/12/12/general-strategy-defc...).
- uhhyeahdude 14y ago
  That game looks awesome. I'm going to play it with a certain relative who is a cold war geek. Thanks for informing me of its existence.
- hartror 14y ago
  Oooh that looks good, thanks!
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  That sounds broken: anyone hitting defcon 1 means everyone loses.

jonnathanson 14y ago

"This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare." Agreed 100%. To me, it seems silly -- not to mention cynical and fatalistic -- that the sole purpose of diplomacy in Civilization games is to add a strategic dimension to warmaking. That's what it is. The game is basically in a constant state of war, and peace only exists if something is going wrong: i.e., the powers are (momentarily) too evenly balanced to attack one another, or someone's just biding time to sneak-attack someone else, or everyone's spending a few years recovering from World War XXIV before gearing up for World War XXV. That said, Civlization can still be an immensely fun and rewarding game. It's not the game I want it to be, but I enjoy trying to squeeze every last ounce of emergent gameplay from it. "Why can't more games have rational goals instead of just being a more advanced form of Pacman?" I suspect because there just isn't a big enough market for games of that nature. Maybe there is a handful of us out there. Maybe a relatively small handful, but one that's willing to pay a fair amount for a really great, truly strategic global power game. I dunno. Maybe it's worth organizing, or Kickstarting, or what have you. If any game devs out there are reading this and are interested, know that there's a niche crossing its fingers for you.

bdunbar 14y ago
Agreed 100%. To me, it seems silly -- not to mention cynical and fatalistic -- that the sole purpose of diplomacy in Civilization games is to add a strategic dimension to warmaking. Out here in the real world, war is a continuation of politics, by other means. Same thing, really, as your description of Civ II. The goal of diplomacy/warmaking is for one's side to come out ahead of the other. See Clausewitz, Machiavelli.
- troels 14y ago
  I hope we've come at least a bit further since the renaissance. Diplomacy doesn't have to be a zero-sum game - indeed it rarely is in the real world. War, on the other hand, is very much that. So in that respect, war is the failure of diplomacy, not the continuation of it.
  - gchpaco 14y ago
    War is actually a negative sum game today; even "winning" you lose a lot. It's not clear to me if this was ever different for anything larger than Viking raiding parties, though.
    - tomrod 14y ago
      US-Mexican War, US-Spanish war. US came out far ahead in bt cases, iirc.
      - gchpaco 14y ago
        That's still possible in a negative sum game; all negative sum means is that the sum of the benefits to all parties is less than the sum of the costs to all parties. So if say the US hoses the Mexicans but good it can still come out ahead as long as the Mexicans go down hard.
  - bdunbar 14y ago
    I hope we've come at least a bit further since the renaissance. I may not understand your definition of 'further'. People are no smarter than they they were in 1500. There are no new cultural institutions. Our toys are better, but people is still people.

DanBC 14y ago

Balance of Power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game)) The game for PC shipped with a MS Windows runtime environment, for an early version of Windows. (2.x?) I remember it being really hard. (http://pc.ign.com/articles/090/090970p1.html http://pc.ign.com/articles/090/090970p1.html) Such a game made today could be brilliant.

gbrindisi 14y ago
> Such a game made today could be brilliant. It has been done: Balance of Power 21st century http://indiegames.com/2009/03/freeware_game_pick_balance_of.html http://indiegames.com/2009/03/freeware_game_pick_balance_of.... Found via the wikipedia page of Chris Crawford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_(game_designer) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_(game_designer)
TeMPOraL 14y ago
The guy also wrote a book about how the game works, which has some good insights into real geopolitics. Can't find the link, unfortunately, but it was a really good read.

ralfd 14y ago

In Civ 4 the different leaders have personality. Ghandi is peaceful and will never backstab a weak player, Montezuma is batshit insane and lusts for blood, Isabella from Spain is a religious fanatic, Mansa Musa will quickly forget past wars and is happy to make peace to trade techs. A player can also befriend and ally a KI and win jointly. There is a Google Tech Talk from the formet Civ lead programmer about this "Fun AI". In Civ 4 the Vanilla AI doesnt focus that much on winning. ManyAI Mods implement a more total War style and brutal min-max-gaming with huge armies to challenge experienced players. Also Civ 5 abandoned the Civ 4 style of diplomacy and replaced it with "hidden box" and a "Hard AI" which plays to win. It was at release date a huge disappointment of many veteran Civ players.

stinkytaco 14y ago
Ghandi always goes for the nukes though. I'm convinced this is an in joke added by the developers of the game to mess with us. Ghandi is one of the most agressive AIs if he views you as a threat.

Impossible 14y ago

Fate of the World (http://fateoftheworld.net/ http://fateoftheworld.net/) is an interesting indie strategy game. You play as a world organization and your goal in the main scenario is to prevent global warming. The problem is, as interesting as the theme is, the base game had serious issues with balance and simply understanding cause and effect, so it was difficult and not always fun (kind of like trying to solve global warming in real life! :)) I still suggest that everyone looking for an interesting take on 4x strategy games check it out. In general board games tend to have much more varied themes and goals than video games, and often have limited direct conflict between players or none at all. Paradox Games (www.paradoxplaza.com) are supposed to be historically accurate, if your main concern is realism. In practice they don't always achieve this goal but they do a better job at it than Civ.

TeMPOraL 14y ago
> Fate of the World (http://fateoftheworld.net/ http://fateoftheworld.net/) is an interesting indie strategy game. Bought it today because of this recommendation. I hate you, Hacker News. ;).

throw_away 14y ago

In the board game Twilight Struggle, a game about the Cold War (& #1 on boardgamegeek.com), you lose if you escalate matters to defcon 1 and cause a nuclear war. A big part of the strategy, though, is knowing how to cause your opponent to inadvertently trigger defcon 1 (http://twilightstrategy.com/2011/12/12/general-strategy-defcon/ http://twilightstrategy.com/2011/12/12/general-strategy-defc...).

uhhyeahdude 14y ago
That game looks awesome. I'm going to play it with a certain relative who is a cold war geek. Thanks for informing me of its existence.
hartror 14y ago
Oooh that looks good, thanks!
flyinRyan 14y ago
That sounds broken: anyone hitting defcon 1 means everyone loses.