Sid Meier's Civilization

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I dun did try millennia today.
Huge map. 2 shit AIs, 1 OP AI, 5 Meh AIs.
Got past the iron age. AI was retarded and forced the plague age and because plague doctors spend exploration XP which I only get like 1 of per turn and it takes 10 per use I ended up in a death spiral and quit.
Might try again tomorrow. But getting ass fucked because some AI on some other continent I didn't even interact with got some bad rolls is ass pain.
 
LMAO if true.
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Ever see the fully built interstellar ship in the original Civilization vidya? That colony ship looks like this thing with a bunch of pods on a truss or something like that.

And in the original Master of Orion a player with a "team color" of red usually or always has the default colony ship design that looks like that: a bunch of pods on a truss thing. Other ships in that sprite set look like Star Trek Federation ships or with that general theme of spherical pods (or space balls). So if you play as the Humans with a red "team color", it can feel like a sequel or continuation of a Civilization vidya where that Alpha Centauri colony is that first off-world colony established parsecs away.

MoO-ship.gif


(BTW, all that brown stuff in that BG is supposed to be a shipyard in space, like the shipyard seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.)​
 
One little thing I adore in Old World (I haven't played it in a while, but I played a lot of it in a really short amount of time) is the way it models jealousy, which is something I don't think I've ever seen in a game.
Instead of just being a "similar attracts, opposites repel" like CK2, you get a whole chain of logic where good men admire each other, good men dislike weakness in bad men, bad men like weakness in other bad men and bad men HATE strength in good men. Hate it more than good men appreciate in each other.

So for example, a generous glutton will admire another generous man, like another gluttonous man, dislike a greedy man, but he will hate and resent and undermine a temperate man. Goodness paints a target on the back of a good man because it draws the jealousy of bad men (the ones most likely to act on it).

It is, unfortunately, wasted on a game with very weak emergent character-driven gameplay, but the core is profound and human and fitting to that sort of moralistic world of Greek philosophers and Roman orators and Jewish preachers.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
One little thing I adore in Old World (I haven't played it in a while, but I played a lot of it in a really short amount of time) is the way it models jealousy, which is something I don't think I've ever seen in a game.
Instead of just being a "similar attracts, opposites repel" like CK2, you get a whole chain of logic where good men admire each other, good men dislike weakness in bad men, bad men like weakness in other bad men and bad men HATE strength in good men. Hate it more than good men appreciate in each other.

So for example, a generous glutton will admire another generous man, like another gluttonous man, dislike a greedy man, but he will hate and resent and undermine a temperate man. Goodness paints a target on the back of a good man because it draws the jealousy of bad men (the ones most likely to act on it).

It is, unfortunately, wasted on a game with very weak emergent character-driven gameplay, but the core is profound and human and fitting to that sort of moralistic world of Greek philosophers and Roman orators and Jewish preachers.
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I played a campaign early last month after about two years of not doing a fully one and still really enjoyed it, on the topic of basic stuff it gets right in characters I really appreciate the deliberate action of being able to have children tutored as an action. In CK2 tutoring is just a passive assignment, there's no real pedagogy involved and your involvement in the cultivation of virtue or weakness in children is essentially nil if you're not directly tutoring the child, in Old World it's something that occurs in bursts and gives you more control over by having events and probabilities of increases based on the tutor's stats.

I also like the archetype system a bit more than CK2's education system - at the very least I would have like to see CK2's education traits adapted slightly. Having character divided into archetypes - Zealot, Builder, Judge, etc. - is more in the territory of CK2's lifestyle traits, but those are basically bonuses a character gets and have little impact on how they're actually viewed by others or what they can actually do. In Old World they're taken as fundamental mentalities that a character has and archetypes will like or dislike one another based on how compatible the associated behaviors and worldviews are, which is much more human than someone coming out of their education a mastermind theologian and it having no impact on his ability to lead a scholarly or religious lifestyle or relate to other theologians.
 
Computer God Autism said:
I also like the archetype system a bit more than CK2's education system - at the very least I would have like to see CK2's education traits adapted slightly. Having character divided into archetypes - Zealot, Builder, Judge, etc. - is more in the territory of CK2's lifestyle traits, but those are basically bonuses a character gets and have little impact on how they're actually viewed by others or what they can actually do. In Old World they're taken as fundamental mentalities that a character has and archetypes will like or dislike one another based on how compatible the associated behaviors and worldviews are, which is much more human than someone coming out of their education a mastermind theologian and it having no impact on his ability to lead a scholarly or religious lifestyle or relate to other theologians.
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I think it's an interesting system. Mostly serves its funciton as a way to define why a character is in your court when you're not simming dozens of people per realm. The archetypes make genuinely interesting psychological profiles on top of their more literal jobs. Like those wanky Meyes-Briggs schema where they have a million special snowflake names and its always something pompous like "the Chessmaster" or "the Empath" instead of "the Toilet-bowl Janitor."

The way I interpret them:

Hero: The wildman, the frontiersman, the epic hero, the champion. Hercules, Odysseus, David, Gilgamesh, Davy Crockett.
Builder: The man of systems, mechanics and physical infrastructure. A director of projects; the kings architect, the king's financier, in a more modern day the minister of industrial regulations.
The Hero is a man of disorder and primal chaos. He eats his meat from the haunch and sleeps under the stars and recognizes the meritocracy of sheer force. The Builder is a man who seeks to rationalize the world, making it safe for eunuchs and women. That's the root of their conflict; while not inherently at odds in a practical or moral sense, they're at odds in sensibility.

Judge: Lawgivers, broadly speaking. Hammurabi, Justinian, Napoleon, Madison. Men of justice and law.
Schemers: Manipulators, Machiavellians, intrigues. Spymasters and court favorites.
The Judge is rooted in a transcendent moral order and attempts to control the world by its rules. The Schemer exists to subvert rules. The two are inherently opposed; the Schemer makes mockery of all the Judge holds dear, and even if the Judge was as unscrupulous person, makes mockery of the levers of the Judge's power.

Commanders and Tacticians: This one I really dislike. It's essentially generals skilled in strategic command versus those skilled in tactical command. The problem is this makes no sense. I think it would make more sense if the opinion penalty was for like and the opinion bonus for dislike: complementary when working in productive subordinate-commander relationships (think Lee with Jackson), rivalrous and dysfunctional when working at the same level (think any number of egotist generals, but a particular one off the top of my head, Montgomery and everyone else; Samsonov and Rennenkampf are another). As personality, Commanders are systematic, rationalistic warfare and/or the moral core of it; commanders who win by moral preservation of their army or by logistics. Tacticians are battlefield artists: flashy, spectacular maneuvers but without grand vision. Victory by tempo.

Diplomats and Orators: Both men of politics and geopolitics, but different in attitude and skillset. Diplomats are mean of realpolitik cutting deals and compromising. Orators are revolutionaries and demagogues, playing to mass prejudices to inspire or to mislead. The Diplomat hates the Orator in the same way the Judge hates the Schemer or the Builder the Hero and vice versa: the Orator is an agent of chaos in a world of order.

Scholars and Zealots: Same shit again. Not REALLY about religious belief but about their way of relating to knowledge and discovering truth in general, which may be moral truth or political truth as much as scientific truth. The Scholar is a man of sober, systematic, rationalistic belief. Detailed study. The Zealot is a man of internal revelation and deep personal conviction. Even within religion, a Scholar is scholasticism, a Zealot mysticism. Within politics, a Scholar may be a sober philosopher, a Zealot an ideologue. Again, the Zealot finds the Scholar's order constraining, the Scholar finds the Zealot destructive and degrading.

All five basically embody some attitude towards order and disorder, structure vs primal authenticity, directed towards different parts of society or human experience.

I actually - for reasons - happened to be toying with these Archetypes with Americans earlier. A list meant to draw broadly. I came up with:
Heroes: Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson
Builders: Alexander Hamilton, Henry Ford
Judges: James Madison, Lyndon Johnson
Schemers: J Edgar Hoover, James Jesus Angleton
Commanders: George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower
Tacticians: Stonewall Jackson, Norman Schwarzkopf
Diplomats: Henry Clay, Henry Kissinger
Orators: Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump
Scholars: Werner von Braun, Milton Friedman
Zealots: William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Roosevelt

My commanders don't fit the "like would hate like" idea well - Eisenhower is pretty much a baby Washington - but you can slot in other cultures and it's plain as day. Like imagine Napoleon and Alexander sharing a joint command, even as junior officers starting out they'd kill each other.


Edit: Realized I’d left off Hoover and Angleton.

You now what Old World is missing (along with the emergent character drama in general)?

Genuine classical tragedy.

Btw I figured out how Judaism might be interpreted as emerging: when a pagan country loses its independence. Think the Babylonian Talmud, the way Judaism was codified and gained its intensity in exile.

I don’t think it works mechanically though, because it would make Judaism spawn way too late in the game or even, quite plausibly, never.
 
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When interacting with any power you must be groveling.

Presumably Potato works in middle management and likes some variant of communism.
 
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