A very interesting LP and review in progress

[raxo2222]

Renaissance era

Watery map + low handicap (slow AI) + quarantine = we are going fast even on Marathon

 

[KaTiON_PT]

To be fair Jman's let's play was a lot more elaborate, he deeply analysed the military system and made an entry on every action he took on his nation, like when he made that dog unit. Jossar's let's play is more like a slideshow where he shows techs and civics, and makes some comments on them here and there, skipping quite a few of them.

 

[raxo2222]

Viva la Industrial Revolution!

 

[Thunderbrd]

Caught up here.

His take on Steampunk was interesting and entirely bewildering to me because it doesn't also include a suggestion to solve his problem with the perspective. There is some very good points being made about our poor power system but I think we've known that's a mess and really needs to be converted into a property to be done at all well. We also know how deep our problems with 'unused' resources are and have pending solutions to that, but of course not everything is solveable. I remember a time when games would crash long before this modern point and I was happy with that because I knew balance in numerous places was a mess past that point.

I also think the feedback that bourgoise is too early may be accurate. But again, I haven't done the civics.

Still... I also have to think they miss the point about some of the quotes and things we present in the game. We are not always 'honoring' some figures of history to include them or what they said. And we don't see techs as always being 'improvements'. They are often just steps on the path of human evolution to where we are now and not above reproach, nor to be glossed over and ignored because they weren't pretty. The attitudes of an era aren't always wise, politically correct, just or pure... they were what they were and would be an injustice to try to portray in another light than how they saw themselves at that time. It doesn't mean we 'agree'. It's kinda like watching the show Mad Men... the characters were terrible people in a charmingly horrific time in terms of social mores, and I'm sure history will see our own age much the same.

 

[raxo2222]

Still... I also have to think they miss the point about some of the quotes and things we present in the game. We are not always 'honoring' some figures of history to include them or what they said. And we don't see techs as always being 'improvements'. They are often just steps on the path of human evolution to where we are now and not above reproach, nor to be glossed over and ignored because they weren't pretty. The attitudes of an era aren't always wise, politically correct, just or pure... they were what they were and would be an injustice to try to portray in another light than how they saw themselves at that time. It doesn't mean we 'agree'. It's kinda like watching the show Mad Men... the characters were terrible people in a charmingly horrific time in terms of social mores, and I'm sure history will see our own age much the same.

I wonder, if they are going to freak over scientific inaccuracies in Atomic and later eras

Maybe that was why Civ series aren't so detailed... they wanted to avoid mess.
I guess they have much lower threshold for display of historical barbarism

 

[KaTiON_PT]

Vanilla civ have fewer techs, buildings and units for the simple reason its easier to balance stuff when there is less of it. As you can attest in that forum balance is out of wack for the simple reason that for every stuff c2c adds it increases the variables at hand and makes it exponentially harder/more timely to balance them.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Vanilla civ have fewer techs, buildings and units for the simple reason its easier to balance stuff when there is less of it. As you can attest in that forum balance is out of wack for the simple reason that for every stuff c2c adds it increases the variables at hand and makes it exponentially harder/more timely to balance them.

True though I don't think we have a deep enough power generation system to represent all the variations of method very well. Clearly it is something we could improve on a lot.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I mean the game already had an Ian Smith quote, so they had to show up somewhere. For extra class, remember that the tech also obsoletes Great Zimbabwe.

It is a testament to the character of the game's content that i'm not mentioning a ton of awful things in the main update (for instance, Management in the techs not mentioned section came with a Racial Profiling building that grants a slight decrease in crime for a big unhappiness penalty), and what manages to get through because it's tied with the significant stuff is still really awful.

The quote was NOT an attempt to suggest that he was right - it was a display of how messed up the worldview that would say that actually is. It also exemplified the entire era's thought and justifications that led to great injustices to Native peoples all around the world. It's there to stir up some feeling, not support the concept nor give it any kind of heroism, though they did at the time feel that there was nobility in this sort of terrible take. I suppose I have to assume that if you read that and feel like 'yeah he was so right!' then you probably need a long hard look in the mirror, but who am I to judge?

As for Great Zimbabwe and Imperialism... Imperialism isn't a good thing either - nor was Torture, but these things exemplified the worst of what human beings were. I don't quite know enough about Great Zimbabwe itself, nor about the Rhodesian culture or its history, though I believe that Sparth was the creator of many of these added cultures. I read a little about the Rhodesian culture and can see how the origin of the nation and the politics surrounding it were related to the birth of a Global Imperialism Movement. I wouldn't think of it as the culture is being presented as the prize earned by humanity for inventing a social movement towards Imperialism so much as a good way to present the birth of that culture in the historic timeline and that the two things were related.

To be honest, I definitely wasn't aware of some of the more questionable stuff in the later eras (some of it but not all). I understand the sentiment of those making a kitchen sink mod of this insane nature to include literally everything in history, both triumphant and terrible, and maybe I'm more naive than most in believing that most of the people putting in these events and buildings aren't doing so from malicious intent. On the other hand, there's a difference between simply including unsavory parts of history as part and parcel of a kitchen sink mod and actively perpetuating harmful stereotypes or bringing to the forefront of the mind events that had and still have grave and tremendous consequences towards entire groups of people even down to recent history (and Civ itself certainly isn't clean of this either. Mao and Stalin even being in Civ 4 is a testament to that). Part of it I suppose is the nature of the game being modded: you want to include all this stuff but you also have to incentivize their use just as a matter of basic game design, otherwise why even include it? But even still, some of the stuff included and written about in the Civlopedia is downright unnecessary. There's a reason I highlighted the whole Gypsy/Romani thing in my playthrough, it's cause the stereotypes and discrimination used to vilify and in many cases completely stamp out the Romani from various parts of Europe had a profound effect on those people that continue down to this day. Including them in the game isn't a problem, even maybe acknowledging in some way the strife that their presence caused in several European communities because of their nomadic lifestyles could be fine too. Having their UU literally be a Criminal unit called the "Beggar" is a step too far though. Maybe the devs would scoff at all this wondering why we're all making such a big deal about stuff that happened in history, and ultimately it's their mod and they can do whatever they want with it, but is this honestly such an unreasonable take? Maybe it ultimately doesn't matter since I still played (and enjoyed) this mod despite all this, so maybe I'm part of the problem

Some of these things are not only incentivized but also may well be more penalizing than they are worth. So you can see how it would've been a mistake from the perspective of leadership to enact them and why. Some of it does support right wing thinking theories and some of it, you may notice, also supports more left wing thinking. In part that is to give fair due to the possibility that those who think along all poles have elements of their views that are correct. Further, many many devs have worked on this mod in a very decentralized approach, and none have tried to morally police it to slant to a particular worldview across the board, though their takes may have slipped in somewhat. Any attempt to do such a sweeping moral audit would be criticized by someone who thinks from the other side of the fence.

Even if we HAVE a personal ideology, we are probably trying mostly to reflect the model of how that thing fits into the world, history, economics etc... as realistically as we possibly can.

Some idealisms and concepts being expressed from all poles are intentional so that you can play the game as the kind of leader you want to pretend you are and sometimes a player wants to play a villain, knowing damn well that's what they are doing. Those who have direct feedback on particular matters are always welcome to comment directly in the forums here and we have an amazingly receptive team that is surprisingly willing to adjust things according to feedback we get, or at least debate it into the dirt as to WHY it was established as it is. By all means, take it all as an invitation to come here and make a point if you feel you have a point to make. Though we may have some seriously deep debates in this forum, we often find that's the most enjoyable part of the modding, and we usually try not to get too angry about our disagreements (though have to steam off and separate ourselves sometimes )

This point about the Beggar, for example, I think was well expressed. I will repeat what I said elsewhere, if it were a more 'romantic criminal' type, I would get it. They were nomadic people that did not believe in the rights of personal ownership and took whatever they wished without regard to local law, believing that the laws of nature overrode all that, but they were still dignified human beings. If one sees the 'beggar' unit as a clever actor or leverager of their unfortunate situation, that spends their days as spies for the wise, an agent in an information network always watching and observing and selling information to those who needed their eyes, you could see it in a positive light. Being a useful unit, very much so, it shouldn't be hard to see it that way. HOWEVER, because the stereotype has been a little too promoted as a negative thing to set people against the Gypsies and that has led to acts of hate and violence being perpetrated against these people, perhaps we should be trying to not promote that stereotypical view and try to put them in a more positive cast.

When I review that unit, I will probably change it. Not because I think it's WRONG how it is as much as because I recognize the grievance being expressed.


The racial profiling thing mentioned in that first quote seems to me, in light of what we try to express, a perfectly designed building. Sure you might get a little more opportunity to diminish crime by getting up more people's asses and throwing more people against the wall for stop and frisk and so on, but the penalties in the injustice of it are likely to be greater than the benefits, which is how we suggest that... yeah this is NOT a good policy. Particularly when we finally get around to making excess unhappiness cause more crime... (making it potentially a self-defeating policy entirely.)

 

[Yudishtira]

The racial profiling thing mentioned in that first quote seems to me, in light of what we try to express, a perfectly designed building. Sure you might get a little more opportunity to diminish crime by getting up more people's asses and throwing more people against the wall for stop and frisk and so on, but the penalties in the injustice of it are likely to be greater than the benefits, which is how we suggest that... yeah this is NOT a good policy. Particularly when we finally get around to making excess unhappiness cause more crime... (making it potentially a self-defeating policy entirely.)

I agree, but otoh, isn't unhappiness easy to ignore in this era, with no prospect of that changing. I have (here for my own use) built crimes that generate bulk unhappiness, because I saw cities with up to 8000+ crime and seemingly no incentive to fix it. It takes often 200 extra unhappiness before any citizens stop work.

The other thing I would raise is that racial profiling is itself a crime (against the constitution, the rule of law, against basic human rights). When a regime mandates to the contrary, that doesn't make racial profiling legal, that makes an illegitimate (or at least criminal) regime.

While this stuff is getting acted on, can I point out that there are "crimes", Armed Communities and Vigilantism, that are entirely positive (no even partial negative effects, except Vigilantism gives XP to criminals trained), and even reduce the crime property. Please tell me you agree this needs fixing urgently.

 

[raxo2222]

I think they would be happy if we biased mod towards progressive anarcho-communism at this point - something like hippie counter culture (or fully automated luxury socially progressive space communism).
So remove any gender related stuff, any evil building, any quote from evil people and so on.
Also no culture would unlock criminal/ruffian unit.
Also make communist/socialist/social democracy related civics OP.

Essentially its like someone showing worst cases in criminology and then being accused of being criminal.

Also what if Something Awful tradition was to find something awful in various things?

 

[Thunderbrd]

I agree, but otoh, isn't unhappiness easy to ignore in this era, with no prospect of that changing. I have (here for my own use) built crimes that generate bulk unhappiness, because I saw cities with up to 8000+ crime and seemingly no incentive to fix it. It takes often 200 extra unhappiness before any citizens stop work.

It would be self defeating to fix crime by adopting the unhappiness it causes, particularly when it's much more effective at creating unhappiness than crime. If it sometimes helps, even if its not a good trade, then there's a displayed reasoning for why governments may choose to do such a thing even though it's not something people would be understanding of.

The other thing I would raise is that racial profiling is itself a crime (against the constitution, the rule of law, against basic human rights). When a regime mandates to the contrary, that doesn't make racial profiling legal, that makes an illegitimate (or at least criminal) regime.

A crime is a breach of the established rules of society and something that can harm the community. If a government enacts a policy, it is by definition not a 'crime' but the opposite of that, although it can certainly be an unjust policy or position or activity. By the concept of 'crime against nature', one can easily argue that any method of punishment is exactly that, a crime perpetuated by the government. We do not have 'oppression' as a property but I've certainly suggested that negative crime would be made to be exactly that. The resistance to the concept has been that the AI would not well handle a property being considered both positive and negative, though I've been seeing if I can get the AI to value a proper balance of response and when I feel that it is zeroed in, I may well start at some point considering the concept of 'oppression' through negative crime numbers.

While this stuff is getting acted on, can I point out that there are "crimes", Armed Communities and Vigilantism, that are entirely positive (no even partial negative effects, except Vigilantism gives XP to criminals trained), and even reduce the crime property. Please tell me you agree this needs fixing urgently.

I think it's good that there are some crimes that are considered crimes for good reason but can still be mostly a positive as well. Note that XP to criminals trained also applies to the ones that are spawned in the city so does tend to be a negative unless your whole strategy is to leverage crime to your benefit. If we wanted to add a negative to Armed Communities, I would certainly think that it should be destabilizing under Rev. Perhaps Vigilantism should be as well? Maybe an unhealth from idiots that are going out to be vigilantes getting themselves killed - the main reason we don't want people being vigilantes in the first place.

I think they would be happy if we biased mod towards progressive anarcho-communism at this point - something like hippie counter culture (or fully automated luxury socially progressive space communism).

While I do in a way agree that the great reverence Civ as a whole shows towards the European concept of 'progress' is definitively flawed as a whole, I wish they could see that the mod is trying to show that fact in its own way, just how and why that is, by NOT sugarcoating things and attempting to show all of it in the most honest light possible. I can understand that some see it as trying to justify the darknesses in human nature, and maybe to some extent it is, but it's also refusing to turn a blind eye to them and suggesting that there are reasons they've existed and that we may need to consider those reasons so as to advance into something better.

Also what if Something Awful tradition was to find something awful in various things?

I know it is... but that doesn't mean we cannot sort out what is justifiable criticisms when decent points are made and determine for ourselves what is a truly legitimate thing that is simply misunderstood and what criticisms to blow off as a result. It should be inspiring our discussion, as I've been allowing it to here, whether it is purely for the sake of trolling or not.

 

[Thunderbrd]

From his LP, it looks like this unit's graphic rides a bit low. I'm not sure what we do to fix that so I'm just posting the fact of it here for y'all.

Reading this LP reminds me that it might be nice to have an option to not have all the alt timelines in a game rather than necessarily having to choose that, OR one that makes it possible for all the players to get them. It's all super cool but is also a major contributing factor to the steamroll effect for players that get out ahead. So whether one would want it all depends on what you want to get out of the game experience I'd think. I could go back and forth on that myself...

 

[Yudishtira]

A crime is a breach of the established rules of society and something that can harm the community. If a government enacts a policy, it is by definition not a 'crime' but the opposite of that, although it can certainly be an unjust policy or position or activity. By the concept of 'crime against nature', one can easily argue that any method of punishment is exactly that, a crime perpetuated by the government. We do not have 'oppression' as a property but I've certainly suggested that negative crime would be made to be exactly that. The resistance to the concept has been that the AI would not well handle a property being considered both positive and negative, though I've been seeing if I can get the AI to value a proper balance of response and when I feel that it is zeroed in, I may well start at some point considering the concept of 'oppression' through negative crime numbers.

Are you kidding? You're saying international law doesn't exist? There is no such thing as an illegitimate or criminal regime? All those Nazis at Nuremberg should have been released without trial, since they were innocent by definition? You don't believe that.

Governments do things all the time that turn out to be illegal, sometimes declared so by that same country's courts.

And no, negative crime is not equivalent to oppression.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Are you kidding? You're saying international law doesn't exist? There is no such thing as an illegitimate or criminal regime? All those Nazis at Nuremberg should have been released without trial, since they were innocent by definition? You don't believe that.

International crime is a different matter. That is established by means of international treaties. I suppose we have that through the UN agreements and we could expand on those in such a way as to enable players to forge treaties against the uses of certain anti-crime measures. I believe most forms of Torture is now considered to be against international law, right?

Governments do things all the time that turn out to be illegal, sometimes declared so by that same country's courts.

True, thus certain civics should make some things crimes potentially. Obsolete them but open them up as something that can happen if crime levels are too high. Someone mentioned we aren't really doing much to represent high end white collar style crime in the mod and maybe some of that could get into government corruption methods. But not all of that would be considered corruption or criminal in a tyranny where the lord IS the law. Clearly, there's a lot we could do to represent much in a more advanced manner still. I've been working on units and there are many fronts of design with few modders actually working to craft these kinds of forward thinking projects.

And no, negative crime is not equivalent to oppression.

Sure it is. When you take too much action to control people's behavior, that is the very definition of oppression. Even if your police are 'nice' but they're constantly up your ass, that's still oppression. If people feel they don't have enough autonomy outside of supervision, or rights to privacy (much of law enforcement is really 'espionage' against the activities of the people) they will eventually get rebellious and resentful.

 

[raxo2222]

They are in Atomic now.

I wonder how long it will take for them to notice, that nuclear powerplants can meltdown.
Since its modularized it can be turned off easily.

Also they found that religious stuff is mostly politically correct

Sourceforge is down for several hours, so new SVN won't be today.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The shoehorning of the Jetsons into the mod would be annoying if the devs didn't already shove in everything else. Guess after a certain point you get inured to the random cultural (mis)appropriation.

There is no such thing as cultural misappropriation. Only cultural appropriation. Expression of all humanity is there to be reflected.

 

[raxo2222]

They reached space age.
It will be a while before they can colonize space.

 

[Yudishtira]

I think it's good that there are some crimes that are considered crimes for good reason but can still be mostly a positive as well. Note that XP to criminals trained also applies to the ones that are spawned in the city so does tend to be a negative unless your whole strategy is to leverage crime to your benefit. If we wanted to add a negative to Armed Communities, I would certainly think that it should be destabilizing under Rev. Perhaps Vigilantism should be as well? Maybe an unhealth from idiots that are going out to be vigilantes getting themselves killed - the main reason we don't want people being vigilantes in the first place.

And it's a complete coincidence that the crimes chosen are those of the ultra-right that feed the redneck fantasy?

What about the "freedom-fighting" (I mean treasonous sedition of course) of Fretilin or the Sandinistas? They are not entirely beneficial, but no crime should be. What about Robin Hood (or Gypsy) redistribution of wealth crimes? What about crimes of belonging to the wrong religion, or disseminating subversive literature like "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? There are plenty of less rabidly rightist crimes to pick, but these were picked deliberately, and that kind of wrongheadedness needs to be opposed urgently.

Armed Communities means 'militia' or cult compounds. They are no-go areas for real law enforcement. They consider themselves above all laws except their own. Especially by your definition "states can't commit crimes", this is obviously not reducing crime, in fact it's not having any positive effect.

 

[Thunderbrd]

And it's a complete coincidence that the crimes chosen are those of the ultra-right that feed the redneck fantasy?

I don't believe that all people that like comics are rednecks so the basis of this whole presumption is somewhat slanted incorrectly imo. People will take handling crime into their own hands when things get out of the power of the government to solve it or people feel like the government can't. That's not a right or left issue. Perhaps modern 'rednecks' project an attachment to these ideas but that can easily change over time and become the kind of thing that the left is in support of instead... take for example if the primary crimes are hate crimes - you'd have a lot of leftists up in arms and doing something about it when the state fails to as well. It's only in the modern climate that gun ownership is even a right/left issue. It used to be something we all agreed was necessary for our personal liberties, but because of how badly so many private bad actors are USING these liberties, the left has tended to advocate a deeper trust for only allowing designated trained authorities to wield such force impartially. I could go on. The point is that right or left isn't really the issue, it's just these things are natural public responses to overwhelming crime levels.

Armed Communities means 'militia' or cult compounds. They are no-go areas for real law enforcement. They consider themselves above all laws except their own. Especially by your definition "states can't commit crimes", this is obviously not reducing crime, in fact it's not having any positive effect.

I'm not sure that it's meant to be militia or cult compounds so much as a bunch of people regularly going out to do what they can about things on their own. Posse's they called them in the wild west and at that time they were the only thing that a Sherrif often had to help control real problems when things got out of hand. Sure, they can also be in an area where things are like you explain but that's more what it looks like when they aren't enough and crime is so high and rising that they have very little benefit. Thing is, if they do have enough of a positive effect, they vanish as fast as they arrive, which may be just enough to allow local barb criminals to keep crime right in a sweet spot to keep spawning until they can be completely overwhelmed, giving the player just looking at the numbers a misleading concept of how much strength to control crime he may have in a particular location when he takes a look at the change numbers for the rounds they exist, then forgets to look when they vanish, leaving the crime to be like a skipping rock right in the perfect zone to perpetuate some real leaders of organized crime in the area.

All this will become a little easier to model with O&A.

Largely, I really don't feel like this is right or left leaning at all. If one wants to argue it, they can probably point to nearly anything in the mod as being one or the other based on their own biases.

 

[Yudishtira]

What have comics got to do with anything? And posses were obviously not illegal (nor were they in any sense "Armed Communities").