man plays single game of civ2 for 10 years

[Tycho Brahe]

Good old civ II when pollution was an issue.

 

[Integral]

When I first saw the story on Reddit, I was really, really interested in it. I was interested in it for two reasons....

SPOILERS FOR POSSIBLE SPOILERS THAT COULD RUIN YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE GAME

Spoiler :

First, I assumed that the player hadn't won because he didn't want to win by conquest, and instead just carried on playing after 2020AD for 10 years because he really liked how his empire had turned out. Then, I assumed, at some point, due to the AI being insatiable warmongers, and their propensity to nuke the crap out of everything you love, the world turned to crap. That was a really interesting scenario, as it broadly recalls the kinds of dystopian futures depicted in a lot of science fiction writing.

Second, I was interested because I wanted to win the game. Who doesn't want to win things? I think it's weird when people say they don't want to win things. I don't trust them. Anyway, reading the story, and reading how he described how each thing he tried resulted in failure, I assumed that this was close to an intractable problem. A lot of people in the Reddit thread said similar things - that there was a stable equilibrium created by the combination of a warmongering AI, nuclear weapons, and global warming, and disturbing that any change you make to the system inevitably returns that system to its stable state. That was a really interesting problem to solve, and loads and loads of people, here and on the reddit thread, tried to solve it.

The combination of those two things created the most interesting question of all: Is there something inherent about Civ 2 that, if played two thousand turns after the intended end point of the game, inevitably results in chaos? Science fiction writing replaces "Civ 2" with "human nature" and "two thousand turns etc" with "two thousand years into the future". Good science fiction doesn't merely say "this is one possible future"; rather, it says "this is the only possible future, because <human nature>". The exposition of what exactly it is about human nature that inevitably results in dystopian chaos is a huge part of science fiction's appeal. And science fiction often tries to resolve its dystopian future: "How can we get out of this mess? How can people survive like this? Is there a solution to this horrible vision?" Again, these questions are all linked back to human nature, often requiring the "resiliance" of humanity, or its "compassion" or something in order to overcome the adversity of the dystopian nightmare. The game garnered interest not strictly because the future was dystopian, but because of the story that was unfolding.

So imagine my disappointment when I open the save file and realise that, actually, neither of those things was true. It was very, very easy to avoid the stalemate in the first place, and it is also very, very easy to overcome. The world was a mess not because of some inherent feature of Civ that the human player acts against, but because the human player himself is just really bad at it. My interest turned to incredulity very quickly. What I thought was a really interesting science fiction story for which an entire community was helping to write the ending was instead a terribly written science fiction story with a very disappointing ending.

So yeah, that's why people are hating on the guy now for being so crap at the game. It's not actually that interesting; in fact, as Kraz says ironically, it's no more interesting than any of my badly played saved games.

I was wondering the same thing.

Having not looked at the save, I assumed that the nuclear wars had left the player's economy in such a state that he could not win: that there were simply not enough shields on the ground to produce an army large enough to win by conquest. Apparently that was not the case.

And of course, stable equilibra are inherently fascinating and even more so in large games like this. Remember Conway's Game of Life? After enough periods the game usually settles down into some sort of equilibrium (usually a periodic equilibrium of period n). I have wondered whether certain Civ games also would exhibit such properties if left to run long enough. I took this person's game to be an example of such long-run equilibrium but it appears to have occurred simply because of poor play.

edit: "most interesting question of all: Is there something inherent about Civ 2 that, if played two thousand turns after the intended end point of the game, inevitably results in chaos?"

But his game isn't chaos: it's highly ordered; a stable equilibrium. That's even more fascinating.

 

[Mise]

Yeah, poor choice of words! Chaos in the "Mad Max" sense rather than chaos in the mathematical sense.

A bunch of people have turned off the human player and set all players to AI control to see what would happen. Pretty cool:
http://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/v4tu4/eternal_war_simulator/
http://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalw...s_i_was_watching_the_war_unfold_as_i_set_the/
Screenshot of one of them, showing American terraforming: http://i.imgur.com/hsFsn.jpg

One guy ran it until 19,745 A.D. before the game stopped working

 

[Murky]

This guy has a good philosophical point.


Link to video.

 

[DroopyTofu]

I thought this story was kinda cool until I came here and realized it was on the easiest difficulty level. It was kinda entertaining to see everyone ripping his playing style to shreds. Personally, I don't have the attention span to play a game that long. I'm usually ready to start a new game by the end of a Civ IV game.

 

[homeyg]

Where can I find a link to the save game?

And this better be on Diety or I'm going to be pissed.

EDIT: And that guy is obviously a troll, too poor to afford the newer versions and trying to scam Firaxis into sending him a copy, it's on Reddit for god's sake.

 

[LucyDuke]

Read the thread. It's not on Deity. And I really doubt it's a scam.

 

[attackfighter]

Could be a scam. Although if it is it's probably too much effort for too little reward... unless he's doing it just for the attention.

 

[aelf]

Could be a scam. Although if it is it's probably too much effort for too little reward... unless he's doing it just for the attention.

You mean like when you post? Always thought it might be a scam to get people to waste their time.

 

[attackfighter]

Hahaha- no. When I post it is to spread enlightenment and joy to all creatures of the Earth

 

[Son of Erdrick]

I dunno, I kind of like playing poorly. Sure I could win because I'm not the AI, therefore I'm not limited to my programming. However! Civ can produce 'interesting' scenarios such as this one, so long as we let our imaginations go wild and suspend our disbelief/grognard-ness when it comes to gaming.

 

[Save_Ferris]

I dunno, I kind of like playing poorly. Sure I could win because I'm not the AI, therefore I'm not limited to my programming. However! Civ can produce 'interesting' scenarios such as this one, so long as we let our imaginations go wild and suspend our disbelief/grognard-ness when it comes to gaming.

Welcome to the forums.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Sometimes I wonder about the people whose only comment about the game is "the guy sucked as a player". Shows a bit of a lack of willingness or ability to have fun with the game to me.

Not all having fun is winning, guys.

 

[Quackers]

How does saying somebody is poor at a video game mean you lack the willingness or ability to have fun with the game?

 

[aelf]

I can't imagine having fun with a game like Civ when your intention is to play poorly for 10 years.

 

[Mise]

I have plenty of fun with Civ, tyvm...

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

It's a single player game he's not playing competitively, he's playing it once in a great while to kill time, and it resulted in a scenario most of us do not reach because we end the game before then. The person in question does not think he has mad skills.

As such, the person in question is not playing the game wrong. He's playing for fun, and has managed to squeeze a lot of fun out of one game for a decade. Which means, he's playing correctly.

Those looking down on him for not being a dominating player (in this particular save file) remind me of folks in the schoolyard picking on the unathletic kid attempting to swing the bat and missing the ball. Oh, he will likely never play for the major leagues. He may never even hit a home run. But he is playing the game, and he's playing it correctly, and he might even be having fun.

You know, I don't have the patience for Minesweeper at the hardest levels. I bet my attempts to play Minesweeper are pretty pathetic compared to those folks that can do it in record time, on mad levels. And yet, once in a while, I might play an easy game of Minesweeper for fun, and not even play it carefully/correctly, where I make a real serious attempt to avoid blowing myself up. Oh look, I could have determined logically that there was definitely a mine there, but I didn't take the game seriously enough to care. If I was really trying, I could have avoided it.

Oh well. And there's a brand new field of mines for me to dodge. I guess my being lame at minesweeper hasn't impeded what fun there was to be derived from it, which to me was the entire point. But I suppose I suck at playing, because I don't take it seriously or competitively as others who might post on a whole forum dedicated to minesweeper. Elitism is always a turn-off, whether it comes from folks who think their race/religion/nationality/wealth/other status makes them superior, or whether it's their gaming experience.

I tell you what. Folks like this guy who play for fun, are a lot more interesting to me than competitive powergamers who don't even derive satisfaction from their accomplishments unless they've bested someone else's. If you can't have fun without having the highest score or fastest win time, then I kinda feel sorry for you.

 

[aelf]

I dunno. Doing something over the course of 10 years with seemingly no desire at all to improve doesn't strike me as an interesting endeavour in the least. If there was some compelling reason to do it that way, then possibly, but not if it was just simply and unequivocally badly done.

I probably suck at a lot of games, but if I'm playing a game for years, I'd probably put at least a minimal amount of effort to get better at it, just to keep myself sufficiently entertained if nothing else.

 

[timtofly]

I dunno. Doing something over the course of 10 years with seemingly no desire at all to improve doesn't strike me as an interesting endeavour in the least. If there was some compelling reason to do it that way, then possibly, but not if it was just simply and unequivocally badly done.

I probably suck at a lot of games, but if I'm playing a game for years, I'd probably put at least a minimal amount of effort to get better at it, just to keep myself sufficiently entertained if nothing else.

This is the key point of the thread. You are the only one who knows you.

 

[Mise]

Nobody's saying he's not having fun. If we were saying "omg he's not having fun", then all this jibber jabber might have a point. We're saying he's crap at the game - he is clearly crap, and I don't see what's so wrong with pointing that out. Knowing that he's crap at the game changes entirely the story.

I can have fun in an empty room with a bouncy ball. But if I did that on and off for 10 years and recorded it, the interest wouldn't be in how that "scenario" turned out (how much "bounce" is left in the ball, the increasingly decrepit state of the room, the marks on the walls and ceilings from particularly tricky bounces), but rather in the incredulity of a grown man playing with a bouncy ball in an empty room for 10 years ("on-and-off" not withstanding). Knowing that this guy is so terrible at the game entirely changes the context with which I view his playing it, and far from being "wrong" to point it out, it's absolutely essential in order to understand and contextualise exactly what we're looking at here. We're not looking at a dystopian future Earth created through the irresistable forces of a universe we have little control over. We're looking at something far more mundane, far more boring: we're looking at some guy's badly played .sav file.