Morality and Civ IV (rantish!)

[Carver]

A much heard but flawed argument. Slavery in the Americas had a harshness and absoluteness that was completely without precedent. For the first time as far as I know there were big groups of slaves who were easily recognized by the colour of their skin, and who essentially had no rights whatsoever and whose descendants would be slaves as well. Slavery in Africa at the time cannot be compared to slavery in the Americas.

Well, a lot of unrelated points. I do have moral problems with civ, as much as I like to play it. At the very least we should think about games to counterbalance its sociological presumptions. Something in the spirit of Illuminatus! perhaps?

That's a good point. In the US we had hereditary chattel slavery which existed only very little, if at all, in sub-Saharan Africa. That's a huge difference. Most African slavery was only temporary forced labor.

 

[foobarred]

I really wish the animals would scream in agony when my warrior clubs them to death. Civ 5 needs seals.

 

[BeyondCivilized]

It's just a game, people.


On the other hand, I get mad mad mad when Arabia adopts Judaism.

Because it will then have to declare war on my Buddhist civ.

 

[BeyondCivilized]

I also wish that they made the Star of David less "Israeli Flag" like and more Golden or perhaps use the candles (Whatever they're called).

It doesn't bother me much though, but it should be noted that we Arabs do not worship the moon when it's a crescent, we wouldn't even mind dumping waste on it in the future as a matter of fact.

 

[Carabodes]

Why is it that furcovered fuzzy creatures have more "value" and "right to live" than the bacteria you wash off your hands, the amoeba you brush off your teeth, the ants you step on, the spiderlings you vacuumclean
OR
the plants you eat?

And digits are not on the CITES redlist, so:
Pasture up, fence in, club down
those 0s and 1s!

and

Free Willy
(but only if he's not yours - hmm, think I'll go build myself a nice privateer)
​

 

[LemonJello]

There's nothing better after a long day of grinding another society into dust, taking all their gold, land and resources while enslaving their populations than to sit down in front of the computer and grind another society into dust, take all their gold, land and resources while enslaving their populations.

Oh, and napalm sticks to kids.

 

[rabidveggie]

Sadly I use to feel bad in Age of Empires II when I killed deer and sheep, in fact I hoarded all the sheep I could to save their lil lives. Lots of time has passed since then and now I clear cut all the land around me, whip my people silly, declare war on close friends, raze all their cities, and nuke them back to the stone age because they have a resource. I still feel remorse in online games toward other humans and won't declare war on people who are nice to me, and I occasionally spare people that I randomly attacked.

 

[algonacy]

A much heard but flawed argument. Slavery in the Americas had a harshness and absoluteness that was completely without precedent. For the first time as far as I know there were big groups of slaves who were easily recognized by the colour of their skin, and who essentially had no rights whatsoever and whose descendants would be slaves as well. Slavery in Africa at the time cannot be compared to slavery in the Americas.

Ummm... that may be true of slavery in Africa, but not slavery as a whole. I'll grant you the descendent slavery issue was fairly unique, but I think even our slaves (terrible though it was) were better off than slaves under an Aztec ruler which have been reported, but not confirmed, to sacrifice 10,000 slaves in a single ritual.

To me, slavery is slavery. There is no pretty picture you can put on it. The other poster saying we are slaves to some marketing slogan or government dogma is way off base in my opinion. The two do not even compare.

But yes, I use slavery in the game all the time. And we all know why, but I'll repeat anyway. IT'S ONLY A GAME.

 

[BeyondCivilized]

Ummm... that may be true of slavery in Africa, but not slavery as a whole. I'll grant you the descendent slavery issue was fairly unique, but I think even our slaves (terrible though it was) were better off than slaves under an Aztec ruler which have been reported, but not confirmed, to sacrifice 10,000 slaves in a single ritual.

To me, slavery is slavery. There is no pretty picture you can put on it. The other poster saying we are slaves to some marketing slogan or government dogma is way off base in my opinion. The two do not even compare.

But yes, I use slavery in the game all the time. And we all know why, but I'll repeat anyway. IT'S ONLY A GAME.

It's not only a game, explain why Hitler or 9/11 for example can not be included.

 

[algonacy]

Oh I can explain that all right. It's the exact same reason: It's only a game. If the makers of the game had included either of those issues people would have complained and the increase in free publicity "probably" would not have been greater than the decrease in sales from people offended by the game. Slavery was a huge part of our world's past (and present) and could be safely included without a huge outpouring of discord. The gamemakers surely will try to please as many people as possible, but even more importantly will try to not offend anyone.

Now, if you want to create a mod for 9/11 or Hitler, feel free. But understand that you will find people who disagree with your need to do so.

 

[Quintillus]

Always remember happy minions are productive minions.

In Civ4 it doesn't make any difference how many of your people are happy so long as it's 50% or greater in each city. Any city with 50% or more happiness is equally productive. So happy-er minions are not more productive minions.

That's another one of CivIV's big flaws compared to CivIII IMO...happiness doesn't count towards score. Who cares if the people suffer, just so long as you have a big population?

 

[KMadCandy]

In Civ4 it doesn't make any difference how many of your people are happy so long as it's 50% or greater in each city. Any city with 50% or more happiness is equally productive.

nope. all i need is one more happy face than i have unhappy faces. 99.9999% of them can be unhappy for all i care, as long as i have one surplus .

of course that percentage assumes an awfully big city...

That's another one of CivIV's big flaws compared to CivIII IMO...happiness doesn't count towards score.

well in one version, was it civ2? all you had to do was turn up luxuries on the final turn and you got a huge boost in score. it didn't matter how long they'd been happy, just that they were happy on the turn you won. now that's silly.

 

[brianshapiro]

Slavery, when invented as a real-world institution, was seen as beneficial to both parties as compared to the alternatives.

Such as:
Kill the losers off completely.
Risk the losers regaining strength and coming after you again, and killing you off completely.

Since we know 'never fight amongst ourselves' isn't an option, when the war's over, you gotta do something with the losers. Slavery allowed the losers to continue to live, and to be a contributive part of humanity, while the winners got to be the ones to take credit for the advancement of civilization. Think of all those wonders that simply couldn't have come into existance without slavery. We'd not even be in the Industrial Age, able to free slaves, without having had them in the first place.

But the big problem is that slavery corrupts both slave and master, and nowadays, when you hear the word, you think only of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (even if you've never read it). The USA was not the first country to have slaves, and Africans were as much perpetrators as they were victims; who do you think went out and got all those slaves and sold them?

Even now, slavery is alive and well, but it's been hidden better and called other names. Probably every single one of us on this forum is a slave to someone; a boss, a government that serves only a few special interests or businesses, the latest marketing fads... There's a lot less whipping and chaining involved than before, but that just means the cage is nicer, not absent.

Well Aristotle wrote something which defends slavery, arguing that it deters warfare, because an aggressor will risk their people turning into slaves.

Real slavery still exists now, not just metaphorical slavery, in some places in Africa and South America. Also, in Eastern Europe we have the sex trade and sex slaves.

If you're talking about society at a larger level, I'd agree that its something much more difficult to escape than it used to be. But still, in the same sense, we were always slaves to our conditions. Even though we have a lot of obligations to institutional society now, in the past we were more constrained by nature.

Interesting that John C Calhoun would have agreed with you; he defended slavery in the US, by stating the world will always be divided into privileged and unprivileged---as evidenced by the conditions of factory workers in the North---and stated his belief that the North desired to be the master, with the South its slave.

What Calhoun was stubborn to, is that history gives us the responsibility to make changes for our own conscience, and that no current situation can be justified by historical law.

 

[brianshapiro]

A much heard but flawed argument. Slavery in the Americas had a harshness and absoluteness that was completely without precedent. For the first time as far as I know there were big groups of slaves who were easily recognized by the colour of their skin, and who essentially had no rights whatsoever and whose descendants would be slaves as well. Slavery in Africa at the time cannot be compared to slavery in the Americas.

If you're talking about the US --british colonies-- in particular, slaves who were owned by families were not the ones treated so badly, in fact often they were treated like members of the family. For example, Jefferson considered his slaves as part of his family. (and you can further divide this into field slaves and house slaves, who were treated differently, obviously workers on the field were made to work)

Where they were treated severely was in the slave trade, where they were stacked on ships and sometimes thrown overboard. The slave trade was banned however far before slavery ended. This was at the center of the whole Amistad trial, where people were shocked to hear the details of a slave trade still in practice.

Also it depends on the time in history. When slaves first arrived, they were treated very similar to indentured servants and later freed. Freed slaves often ended up owning slaves themselves---so you would see a lot of black men owning black slaves of their own. Or sometimes, native americans owning black slaves.

Later, to preserve economic interests, the chattel system developed---which was the unique aspect of American slavery---and blacks no longer had an easy chance for freedom. While this aspect of American slavery deserves to be villified.. there were other times in history where slaves were treated in crueler conditions.. so you should hold back from grandiose statements about American slavery being the worst occurrence in history. I'm sure Assyrians treated their slaves pretty badly (according to accounts, being an Assyrian slave was worse than death). And remember European women who were taken as slaves by Muslims were forced into harems. That's not nice either.

As time went on, and the country started industrializing, racist attitudes and treatment of blacks grew among slave masters in the South, and blacks were increasingly mistreaten. This just urged on calls for abolition.

She believes in the vital role of the state for the development of writing and intensive agriculture, and I don't think she would have said same thing about CIV if she'd seen the state as a predatory system of the powerful over the weak which serves (or served, at that point) no further purpose then legitimizing and streamlining theft.

Except the concept of a 'civilization' in the game isn't the same as the concept of a 'state'. Its a tidy abstraction which makes Civilization more like a god-game than a political game. In the real world leaders die, they don't choose technological advancements, they don't control revolutions, they don't decide on war, and don't build every single thing. If we want to change the game to be more like reality there's a whole lot more we have to change than considerations about the state versus the rest of society.

 

[aragami_frog]

While playing I NEVER have ever selected "Slavery" for my nation and don't plan on doing so anytime soon cause I despise the institution.

I also rarely if ever (but have on maybe 1-2 ocassions) selected "Theocracy" cause I think the whole idea of a religious government to be bad.

I also rarely have work boats go for whales.

 

[silver 2039]

You people are discussing the morality of a game. How patethic is this?

It is a bloody game. I do many things in the game I wouldn't do in real life.

I burn cities to the ground with rampaging hordes of camel archers, I pillage land, farms, villages and such leaving the it barren, I whip, oppress and starve my people working them to death. I adopt autocratic oppressive governments, that make my citizens into slaves. I bray with maniacal laughter as I annihilate cities with nuclear weapons. Because its a bloody game.

I have yet to do those things in real life.

 

[Crispus]

I think slavery was poorly implemented in this game.

I like how Rome: Total war handled it , that newly conquered city had an option for slavery and if you invoked it , it would disperse a portion of that city's populace into the rest of your other city's population. Oh well not a huge flaw , I still love the game and have since civ 2. Ahh the memories of my phalanx succesfully defending against a battleship LOL!

Other than that point , I don't like the religions but I still make full use of them, when opportunity strikes.