zero sum

I was asked to talk about the economic principle zero sum game. It is used to describe an event where one side loses (or gains) something that is equivalent and opposite to the gain (or lost) of the other side.

Civ5 in many ways is a zero sum game. For example a wonder can only be acquired once making it a zero sum. If two Civs are building the Porcelain Tower, one is going to get it (gain) and one will not (loss). It works the same for city states if you become allies with a city state the only way someone else can be allies with it is to give more money (gaining more influence) to them than you did. This leads to a zero sum game where you lose the city state ally, he gains the city state ally. Wars are also a zero sum game and this is true in Civ5 and in real life. Any war will end up with someone gaining something and someone losing something. This for me is a great design element for Civ since it really brings the game to life. It makes you think about all the choices you make because you always know you might be on the losing end of a conflict.

Before

After

I think that The zero sum theory cannot be used on a smaller scale like 8 grade life because there is not really this concept of gaining something at the loss of another student. On the other hand, it can be used in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In this conflict Palestine has been on the losing end of the zero sum game. It as lost a lot of land since the jews got Israel. They are constantly losing their land at the benefit of the Israelis, making them now have only a small part of the land they had before 9Israel came to be.

Have you ever been in a zero sum game? Tell me in the comments.

War crimes- GS

I was asked to talk about war crimes and how they can translate to Civ 5. I came up blank on the first day, but after a little research I found some things to talk about. War crimes were solidified by the Geneva convention after world WWII. They were established to limit the brutalities of war, so that things like the holocaust would never happen again. The basic rules are that you are not allowed to attack people that are not part of the war (civilians) or are out of combat (wounded, sick, prisoners). It also limits the use of indiscriminate weapons like landmines, cluster bombs or chemical weapons. The reason for that is that they cause damage that can't be controlled creating a threat to civilian lives.

In Civ 5 you can see these crimes made all the time. For example, in the game of my friend, someone shot and killed a missionary. This is a war crime because people that are not part of the war have been harmed. In Civ the use of some weapons, for example Nuclear bombs, is a war crime. These are indiscriminate weapons because they kill everything: units, crops, animals, civilians. They cannot be controlled like archers or tanks. The damage is more random and dangerous to everything.

(Nuclear bombs)

The reason these actions have no repercussions on the player is that you can't see the population. It is a number you are killing, not a man, woman or a child. This is a problem video game can't solve because you can't make the game seem human enough that it gives the same feeling as in real life. This makes war crimes feel like a normal action you would do on any other turn. It's a flaw that could maybe be solved by having a consequence for war crimes.

(Sorry, could not find good images)

In class we are talking about the Palestinian Israelis war. I was asked to try and find war crimes the two countries committed. I found that both sides did not respect the fact that civilians should not be harmed in war. They both bomb civilians and civilian property. Just browse around the web and you will find millions of examples of how innocent people were killed in these attacks. Things like this should not happen, but the Geneva convention can only do so much to stop the horrors that happen in wars. The only thing we can do is hope that people will use their humanity to see that what they're doing is wrong.


Here is some really bias, propaganda from both sides:

Game theory- GS

Game theory is a concept that was invented during the Cold War. It shows how humans think when they are faced with a situation in which they need to put faith in someone else. It has been shown that people will choose to act in self interest rather than to cooperate. In the cold war this was based on this simple premise. If we don't produce nuclear bombs and the other country does, then we are defeated. This lead to both sides deciding to build nuclear bombs in "self defense," even if both sides knew that not building bombs would be better for both of them.

I liked the experience we had in class, I think that it really made us understand the concept of game theory. We lost because my team decided to share. I was the only one against that idea because the math showed me that saying steal would have made been better. Here is the math:

Us Them

share share= 1

share steal= -1

steal share = 1

steal steal = 0

Steal 1-0= 1 Share 1-1= 0

By these calculations, I concluded that stealing would guarantee a non-negative outcome. The reason (share-steal) is -1 is that if we lost we had a consequence. This showed me that people sometimes will try to follow their feelings, even if the facts show that the outcome is more likely to be negative. I think that the fact that we picked share actually made me happier because it proved that my idea was right.

In Civ 5 the open border option works on game theory, this practices your trust in the other Civ. The reason for that is that it could be bringing troops in your capital to attack it, but the other Civ could also just want to pass through your land. This leads to an open border deal often being countered by another open border deal by the other civilization. This is a negative outcome because you could have asked for something else that would have been more helpful (gold, resources, ect...). In my personal game I am dealing with game theory right now. My game theory is more complicated because it involves three countries: Me, Brazil, and Spain. Brazil and I are now attacking Spain. These factors that come into play: The player playing Brazil is good friends with the player playing Spain, Spain is in 1st place, I am in 2nd place. This makes me think of all the possible outcomes from him helping me or him betraying me. Right now I hope that all will go well and that I will win this war. I am putting faith in someone else or choosing "share" in The prisoners' dilemma.

I think that the prisoners' dilemma can connect to the real world trough relationship between countries. A great example is Palestine and Israel. In this "war" share = don't shoot and steal = shoot. This is repeated almost every day and most of the time both chooses shoot. This makes the other side mad so the shoot and this make that battle an infinite mess that will not stop if they do not both choose to not shoot. 

Ownership- GS

I was asked to determine what ownership meant. I think that in the real world, ownership means controlling something. I think that if I can do whatever I want to something, I truly own it. For example a house is the owned of its inhabitants because they can do anything they want with it, such as breaking down walls to make new rooms. On the other hand, an apartment is not owned by its inhabitants because they are limited in what they can do. In the case of an apartment the ownership would be in the hands of the landlord.

I think that the only way to own a country is a dictatorship because you have complete control over your land, while a democracy must vote making the land a possession of everyone in it. If I am asked I say that ownership is having total control over something or someone.

In Civ 5 there are multiple ways to get more land. You can conquer it or you can gain it naturally. This is different from the real world because the countries' borders do not grow naturally, since most of the space is already owned. So the main way land is gained is through war. An example of conquered land in Civ5 is the image above. The red circle used to be a Japanese territory. However, we went to war, as I talk about in my last post, and I claimed that piece of land. As you can see, my territory is growing into the red circle. In Civ if you lose land you lose its ownership. The invaders now control it and it is theirs. I think that no matter the time you have owned the land you lose it when it is captured by another Civ. This applies to almost everything In Civ, from sciences you can steal, to the builders you can capture.

This is similar to the real world in some cases.  For example, America was owned In this order,(oldest to newest). First, it the native tribes owned the land. Then the English came along and colonized America. Then the Americans took the land through the American revolution. As you can see The land shifted owners from the natives to the English to the Americans. I think that this shows that land over time becomes possession of the new leader. Notice I say over time. I think that unlike in Civ the possession of land can only be true if a deal is made (American independence) or by time (English control of the Americas). I do not know how much time must pass for the land to count as owned but I would say it is when the fighting for repossession of the land as stoped.

Justified Wars? -GS

I was asked to write about how or when war is ok. I think that war is not good, but that it can be justified, for example, if you're being attacked or if your quality of life is endangered.

 In my game, Japan was blocking my way to the rest of the world. This made my Civs life's hard, limiting me to my small part of land. This meant war because we wanted and needed to explore. I needed to explore in order to find the other Civs, to have a better chance at spreading my religion and to establish better trade routes. This war ended with two of their cities razed and a clear path for me to pass.

Now that I look back, I can see the strategic advantages that this war gave me. Before I attacked them, they were surrounding my Civ. That was not good from a strategic standpoint because they could attack me from almost all around, making it difficult to defend my Civ. So destroying some of their cities gave me a great strategic advantage, making them less powerful and as a bonus they feared me now.  It also gave me the possibility to conquer more land, making it possible for me to build more cities around the world. This, I think, is a justified war because my quality of life was threatened, and they would have declared war on us anyway if we did not attack them first.

I think that war should not be declared in real life except as a last resort. War should only be defensive and not offensive. This, I think, would reduce the number of wars a lot because multiple ways can be used to make things like the quality of life better. Some examples include making trade deals or establishing alliances. As I look back on my game, I see that I lost a possible powerful ally which would have made a wall for me in times of war.

GNP vs GNH -GS

The countries of the world are trying to measure happiness to make the quality of life in their country better. The main method for this is called GNP (gross national product). It tries to calculate happiness under the assumption that if more money is spent the people are happier. But in recent years a new method has challenged the GNP this method is the GNH (gross national happiness).

A country that is trying to initiate the GNH is Bhutan. Bhutan is a small country in between India and China. It was a small closed off country until it opened its borders to tourists in 1974. Bhutan is the main supporter of GNH, thinking that it represents better what the citizens' quality of life is than GNP. GNP is used to calculate the amount of money a country spends and try's to reflect its quality of life with that data. The most common con of this method is that things like traffic jams will boost the GNP (more gas is sold) but not make the people happy (who likes traffic jams?). However, GNH does not have this problem since it tries to measure the total sum of the economic output, environmental impacts, the spiritual and cultural growth of citizens, mental and physical health and the strength of the corporate and political systems. This brings up a better vision of what the quality of life is like in a country.

I personally think that GNH is better because it takes more factors into consideration. It takes into consideration the health of the population, the presence of religion, and more. This makes things like traffic jams have less impact on the total GNH.

This can connect to Civ because happiness is more important than wealth. The main reason for this is that happiness can impact the wealth of your Civ, and that your Civ can be happy with low wealth. So in all ways happiness is more important. An example is that in my game I have a lot of happiness, this leads to me getting the bonus that happiness gives. It also helps me get more wealth with the luxury resources I have in double. I can trade these resources to other Civs to make more money per turn. Yes, it could be argued that more money in Civ is important because you can buy happiness with buildings and that gold is a really important resource, but happiness can impact gold more than gold can impact happiness.

This is how GNP and GNH affect the real world and Civ 5.

The law of supply and demand.- GS

Supply and demand is starting point in economics it works like this. If demands are high, the prices go down. On the other hand, if the prices are high, demand goes down. It is really simple when you think about, but it helps a lot to know how it works. For example, if you sell your strawberries during the strawberry season the supply of strawberry will be high, so the price will go down. However, if you wait and sell your strawberries in the winter the supply will be low so the price will be higher.

Supply and demand as not affected my game a lot because I just reached turn 100. However, copper and spices are in demand in my city this makes the price I'm willing to pay for those 2 resources much higher. Since I'm the only one on my knowledge to want these two resources, making the demand very low and by the law of supply and demand the prices higher. I personally did not change the supply and demand yet, but I think that my possession of most of the world's gold (at my knowledge) will affect the supply and demand later on in the game.

A great example of supply and the demand in history would be when Colombus found the Americas. The only reason the Americas were found at that time is that Colombus wanted a faster way to get to India. Then you know the story he sails to India by the Atlantic and lands in America instead. But do you know why Colombus wanted a faster way to India? The answer supply and demand. During that time period a resource Europe was lacking was spices. This made the demand very high therefor, making the price low and dissuading any farmers from farming spices. But in India the supply of spice and the demand were pretty average almost at an equilibrium (perfect price with demand matching supply= equilibrium) So Colombus was sent by the king of Spain to get spices from India where the spices costed less.

This is how the law of supply and demand affects the real world and Civ 5.

Scarcity-GS

In Civ 5 the resources are always different so sometimes gold can be scarce while in other games production can be scarce. What is sure is that you won't get a perfect world. This means that depending on what type of victory you want, you will need to focus on one resource. If you want to win by science you will focus on the science/production, so that you can get advances in science fast and production for sciences buildings. If you want to win by culture you will need to focus on culture/production, so that you won't get overtaken by someone's culture and production to build buildings that give more culture/tourism. Finally, if you want to win democratically or militarily you will need to focus on gold and production so that you can by unit and city states and builds that help your military power or your politics. As you can see production is the most important to me, but this is for another blog entry.

The result of scarcity can be devastating in Civ, if you don't get good resources you will have trouble winning in  any way. So planning your strategy to get good resources is essential. I am just at the start of my game so right now so I have not experienced scarcity so I can't really talk about it. My situation right now is pretty good I am not lacking any resources and have a pretty balanced game so far.

In real life a scarce resource is oil. Oil is everything in the real world, it makes the world what it is. However, since it’s not an infinite resource and that everyone want it it is less and less common these days. It can be compared to luxury resources in Civ. In Civ happiness is the biggest factor in Civ changing everything from your money income to how fast you're civ grows.

Multiplayer Civ-GS

Playing against real people will be very different from playing against the A.I . The main thing is that the enemies are not programed so their tactics are less obvious to predict. There is also that human trust is in the game if you are not trustworthy in real life than people won't want to ally you in Civ.
This also makes outcomes as small as a trade seems gigantic because if you don't have a good relationship, then you won't be able to progress as fast as the other civs

It will also be more educative because instead of just learning about geography and thing like that you will learn about psychology and trade. It also trains how you manage stress and its work on your strategic planning more than against bots. I think Mr. G wants us to play against real people so we get a idea of how the real world came to be as it is today.

I would not put my odds really high I think I might not win because I am less experienced than most people in my group so I think that not trusting too much and playing it safe will be the best strategy

My plans for the game is to rush the most wonders (if I can get Egypte) I will not plan for which victory I want and see what the game offers me.

Winning-GD

In my personal game I'm close to winning in both science and culture. But while I was playing I noticed that these two victories often lead to the 2 others military and democratic. I noticed that all of the victory influences each other.

Science and military: 

Domination is probably the hardest way to win because of the danger of this act. First going into war with a country whit the same military strength as you are really hard because it's like fighting your shadow. But what I have noticed in my game is that I am so advance in science I can go to war and win easily. For example now I have the Pracinha which makes it easy to kill off weaker unit because it's one of the most powerful units in the game so far at 70 melee damage. Also, if you concentrate on science you can get units like nukes, which make it easy to win wars at a distance. The domination victory also helps you win more science for example, if you take a city and make it yours, than you can use it to make more science.

Cultural and democratic:

Cultural and democratic victory are probably the longest and the most boring victory. But I realized that one doesn't come without the other. I realized that the world congress could help you make decisions that help you get more tourism/culture. For example, art funding gives a 33% faster building of great artists, writer, and musicians which gives you more tourism. Culture also help you  get a better role better in the word congress. The policies can affect how Civs and city states see you for example patronage commerce, 

 Science and democratic:

Science influences democratic because Some of the sciences like globalization give you more delegate there for making you have more influence in the world congress. You can also find trough science building that gives you more vote in the world congress like the forbidden temple.

Demographics affect science because of the decision you can make. For example, science funding gives you a 33% faster building rate for buildings great scientist architect and merchants. 

Culture and military: Culture affects your military power trough policies like honor which give you more military power. Military power can affect culture if for example if you destroy a Civ with a lot of culture or therefor making your quest to win with culture easier. Also, if you capture a Civ/city-state whit a wonder inside its border you might get culture. (Mount Fuji, El Dorado, and Mount Kilimanjaro.

                                                                         

Science culture: culture affects science trough policies like rationalism which gives you alot of science (I know from personal experience). Science affects culture because it lets you build building that give you more culture per turn. This gives you culture faster therefor making it more easy to get policies that help you get more science and repeat.

Democratic military: 

This one was tougher because if you do wars it makes you look bad in the world congress. But I found out a way where you would be good using war to change vote in world congress. For example, if someone is being annoying then you murder him and he is not annoying anymore. And the same goes for wars If someone is bombing you with nukes than make them stop by making nuke illegal (good thing if Gandhi is in the game.)

This is how all the types of victory interact with each other. I think that you have better chances of winning if you try and use them together instead of taking one out of the load and praying on that.