Ideas for C2C

[Thunderbrd]

BTW, this blog post is a great musing on how and why anarchism as a proper ideology is either absent or demonized in 4X games: http://www.anarchogeekreview.com/vi...and-why-cant-we-have-anarchist-strategy-games

Interesting article. I would argue that the real world has presented an honest anarchist society and shown what happens with it. It was pretty much the way the Native Americans lived. It was wonderful. Most of the colonists who landed here had to be kept from getting to know the natives too closely or they would defect and join them because their way of life was nearly idyllic, particularly in terms of how authority worked - it was pretty much optional whether you obeyed the chief or not and your opinion as an individual was highly respected as yours to have an operate under. It was a powerful way to run their society. But it also led to being massively under-developed technologically because they did not feel the dramatic need to conquer and control those around them, to be a dominant force in the world. They sought to have a place and that was sufficient for them, to live in harmony and balance with other people and to be as cooperative as possible while demanding their autonomy and showing force when necessary to do so. In the long run, the European way of dividing and conquering and claiming ownership over everything they could proved to be too destructive a force for this way of life to co-exist with and these 'anarchist' people were taken advantage of, scattered, and dominated. The utopia they had created became their downfall.

I would love to have a more inclusive civics approach to this that shows how this takes place. I don't personally work with civics much but if someone wanted to give this some serious consideration as an option that would be awesome. One thing I've often considered is that perhaps we should have an alternative strategy to winning the game that doesn't include technological achievement. Perhaps some kind of spirituality attainment, a self mastery or harmony victory where you become so attuned with nature as opposed to commanding of it that your society as a whole ascends to another plane of existence or something. An alternative tech path, perhaps, one that doesn't allow for mining and other behaviors that injure or disrespect the planet or its denizens, but leads to great rewards - but is very difficult to keep thriving when it encounters the more aggressive technological societies.

 

[tmv]

it was pretty much optional whether you obeyed the chief or not and your opinion as an individual was highly respected as yours to have an operate under. It was a powerful way to run their society. But it also led to being massively under-developed technologically because they did not feel the dramatic need to conquer and control those around them, to be a dominant force in the world. They sought to have a place and that was sufficient for them, to live in harmony and balance with other people

erm ... I take it you are not talking about the Inkas, are you?

 

[raxo2222]

erm ... I take it you are not talking about the Inkas, are you?

Weren't Aztecs and Mayans "fun" guys too?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

He is probably talking about "the uniting the five Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations under one Great Law of Peace" basically a Golden Age which was in full swing when the Europeans invaded.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yeah, no the cultures south of the Mexican border as we know it today were not at all like this. Quite imperialistic actually, and were expanding and probably would've eventually conquered the whole new world given time.

 

[Noriad2]

Thunderbrd: that's the Myth of the Noble Savage. It's just an archetype in literature and made-up. The north-American natives have been killing each other for centuries before Europeans arrived in North America.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Thunderbrd: that's the Myth of the Noble Savage. It's just an archetype in literature and made-up. The north-American natives have been killing each other for centuries before Europeans arrived in North America.

I'm not saying they weren't. Not all tribes were wise and peaceable. Not all tribes were extremely hostile either. It's also not a myth what I stated but I DO find the term "myth of the noble savage" about as offensive as it gets because it's designed to undermine the growing body of facts that the natives were spiritually far ahead of the Whites that invaded them and committed the worst extent of genocide the world has ever seen. It's ironic that America should hold itself so proud that it defeated Nazi Germany when our own sins are far worse and still largely denied. Generally speaking, to the majority of Natives, Human life was not intrinsically above that of the animals they hunted and anything that was a threat was not amoral to put down, and as with any human groups, misunderstandings and border disputes did take place. They also had customs designed to minimize the need to kill to establish the demand of respect that they needed to sometimes assert with one another. Competition naturally takes place between predatory groups that all need to eat.