The Thinkers Guild: How to discuss in a Civ 3 Demo game?

[DAVOUT]

We have concluded in a previous thread (What does it means to be a builder?) that the pure warmonger was not an efficient player, and that the same was true for the pure builder. Those two categories can only be segregated by the degree of priority they assign to building and warmongering, but both recognize the necessity to make early wars as well as building.

With the prospect of the successful end of our first wars, come the preliminary discussions on the overall orientation of our general policy, and (not so) surprisingly we observe the use of arguments leading quickly to a dead end. For instance, we have heard: do you want the historians of the future refer to us as genocidal barbarians? This is clearly an immediate call on emotional feelings, shame, pride, self esteem, but also a biased one, because the answer does not warrant the issue on which we have absolutely no control. Another example shows a prominent builder negating that pride could justify any decision regarding the conduct of affairs, which is not wrong, or at least not always, of course, but quite astonishing when said within the same party, not to say by the same person.

One of the reasons explaining this difficulty to discuss of general policy originates from the vast understanding of the game that the most qualified citizens have acquired; who can deny that without this experience Apolyton would not be in the state it is now? But Civ3 is a game of discovery, with strategic phases, rather than a strategic game, as it has been demonstrated (What type of victory?); that means that in some way we are cheating since we avoid all problems and difficulties of the initial discovery of our enemy: the AI; we cannot be surprised by the AI, and consequently we have just to choose between several path differently appreciated by different citizens but already experienced. The situation would be extremely different if we were playing against one or several Human Intelligences; this would create a permanent uncertainty which would probably oblige us to be much more cautious. And the discussions about general policy would certainly be dominated by the safety argument.

Although we are not playing against Human Intelligences, would not it be possible to put aside our knowledge of the AI behaviour, when discussing of general policy, to develop rational arguments only based on the game mechanics in view of maximizing the safety of our empire? Then the choice of a political stance would be limited to short, medium and long term optimum, which is as far as possible of emotions and ideology.

This hypothesis is in great need of criticism, opinions, discussion; all are welcome.

[UnOrthOdOx]

We as humans cannot simply erase our past experiences. Even if we made an attempt at it, they would still have a way of influencing our decisions. To thik it possible to do otherwise would be folly. This would be an interesting experiment to try out, along with the ethics restrictions. To limit ourselves to how we, as enlightened, 21st century humans would overcome the challenges faced in the game and not by how we have all learned to play the game. This is another that must wait for 'next time' for even if we begun attempting this now, it would not be a true test as we have already played on our knowledge of the opponent.

I see many possibilities far beyond what we are doing here currently. With any luck we can try out different ways to play this game as a community beyond the confines of the computer code. Imagine our starting a game, and using something akin to the $ game to dictate our actions. Bidding on who gets the workers, who builds warriors, who claims which territory. A simple system could be laid out. Things may not be decided on what is best against the AI, but what is best towards the game that WE had made instead. I hope to see such an experiment arise, but do not expect to see such till after the conclusion of this game.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
[...]quite astonishing when said within the same party, not to say by the same person.

Wow you got me
I think these are 2 different layers of analysis :

1. The emotive approach
The emotive approach deals with the choice of victory type. In Civ3, peaceful and warring paths are both balanced to get to victory. There is no objective way to tell : "diplomacy victory is better" or "conquest victory is better". We have to be emotional in this question.

2. The "rational" approach
The "rational" approach deals with ways to go to victory, whatever it is. When I said "only victory matters", I was in this layer of analysis : I think we need a deep building period if we want to outproduce, outresearch, and outmoney the AI. What we do once we have this good infrastructure (i.e build offensive untis, defensive units, make more money) is not the concern of my builder urge.
Whatever we want after, I'm almost sure we need to build without restrict, if we want to be efficient in the long run.

Conclusion
So, I don't think I was contradicting myself with the 2 things. As much as SirRalph doesn't contradict himself when he says somewhere "only wictory matters" (I quoted him, basically), and when he tells elsewhere about his pride of being Apolytonian.

Sorry for bothering you, but I felt I had to answer

Would not it be possible to put aside our knowledge of the AI behaviour, when discussing of general policy[...] ?

To put it bluntly, no. We're exactly like people who played ahead, we somehow know the future, and we can't get rid of this knowledge. Even if we pretend to be perfectly roleplaying, our knowledge will come perniciously, and tell us "you know this is the best strategy".

We strictly banned playing ahead because we pictured the knowledge of the future will influence all those who know it, even if they try not to be influenced. I'm sure the knowledge of the AI mechanism will affect us the same way.
But, unlike playing ahead, we all have our interpretation of the AI behaviour : this leads to the debate on the efficiency of giving in to AI demands. A month ago, these different interpretations led to the fears concerning our upcoming attack on Washington (Trip just had a bad experience with archer rush, and thought we were gonna be screwed).

These are the reasons why I think it's impossible not to use our knowledge of the AI, even if it would be desirable.

[DAVOUT]

Spiffor,

You ll never bother me with such a gallant answer.

When you say that you do not contradict yourself, I cant refrain to observe that you need a complex set of layers and approaches to do so, and I translate (abusively) that you accept your own contradictions, which is wise and clever.

And when I see that, according to you, Sir Ralph enjoys the same kind of non-contradiction, and that you are really on the way to be in agreement with him on the matter of the number of knights (he wants 10 and you accept 8 chariots to be upgraded to knights), I feel quite confident in a significant improvement in the mutual understanding when discussing the general policy in the future.

About our knowledge of the AI behaviour, I don’t believe we could forget it, but that we could try not to confine our reasoning in the limits of the known behaviour of the AI. Difficult ? Sure. Useless ? Who knows ?