No, you're not the only one. It's funny that you mention oil, because misguided individuals like the one who started this thread are the reason we're paying $4 a gallon gas.
I came in here looking for some builder tips I might not know & I wind up with some communist changing the game around with some kind of real world values he holds. If I want some left wing crap spoon fed to me then I will turn on the nightly news.
If I want to make the game harder I'll go up a level, plenty of challenge there.
First, I suspect that D. N. is a She, not a He. Women do tend to have a different view of things than men. If you do not understand that, spend some time watching girls and guys play a competitive board wargame sometime. It would be quite enlightening. Note, the girls normally win.
$4 a gallon gas = I have no problems with offshore drilling or drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge as long as proper precautions are taken, and I spent my Army time in Alaska in the 1970s figuring out how to guard the Alaska Pipeline from, among other groups, the environmental radicals who wished to blow it up.
Communist = My preferred government in the game is a modified Monarchy, and I have not and will not play communist. I have my own business and am a staunch supporter of the free enterprise system, plus having voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1972.
Left wing = I spent the 1991 Gulf War working for the US Marine Corps as a consultant, and nearly went back on active duty with them even though having been previously medically retired from the US Army. If you served in the Marines in the First Gulf War, I may have helped you stay alive. Since 9/11, I have been doing consultant work for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and if not for a 18 month security clearance backlog, would be working for them full time and not posting to this board. I will not go into detail what I do, but if you have a target that you wish to destroy, I will tell you precisely how to do so, and your various options ranging from the Jeweler's Hammer to crack a walnut to using a piledriver to crack the walnut. I lean more to the piledriver approach, but sometimes a Jeweler's hammer is to be preferred.
Presently, I am teaching a summer course in history to a group of junior high and high school students using various board war and strategy games, including Axis and Allies, Britannia, History of the World, and War: Age of Imperialism. Somehow, that does not strike people as being "left wing". I have been accused of being a Warmonger, which I am most definitely not. Simply someone who would like to fight in the most optimum manner for achieving long term goals, and who does feel that sometimes not fighting is a far worse option that going to war.
I have enjoyed the discussion on the thread, while disagreeing with some of D.N.'s views, particularly the ones with respect to religion. I do tend to be reluctant to chop forests in the game, mainly because of some of my background, but in real life have no trouble with cutting old growth timber under proper controls, and also am aware that there is more acreage now in forests than when the country was settled.
As for changing the game, I modify it drastically in many respects, which drives some of the other forum member nuts. Since I assist game companies in developing games, as well as design them myself, I view a game as a starting point, not a finished product.