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Episode 166: Civilizations with the Fireside Alliance
337 Plays2 years ago
Hello Podwalkers! Today Alex is joined by Amy and Hunter of Two Shrinks Pod, and Dan of Leftover Army Monster podcasts in our first major collaboration with the Fireside Alliance, to discuss the Civilization video game series (turn based strategy games where your goal is to bring a civilization from a single city to global dominance through any of a number of different types of victories). This wide ranging conversation includes topics around problematic elements in a game that is supposed to represent real history to some degree, and more technical aspects. There is also general goofiness and fun stories/favorite strategies. While this episode does not discuss Magic elements, the topics of community and mental health are present. It’s a fairly big departure from our normal topics, but was a way to higlight collaboration with other creators who are part of the Fireside Alliance. We hope y’all enjoy it!
Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter
We also are proud to have partnered with Grinding Coffee Co a black, LGBT+ affiliated and owned, coffee business that is aimed at providing coffee to gamers. You can read more about their mission here.
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
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Transcript
Introduction: Special Episode on Civilization
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Koblin Lore podcast. And this is a very special episode, something I'm very excited about. I say special most of the time because, you know, every episode is special in its own way, but this one is very, very extra special because we're not really going to talk about magic. We're very specifically, in fact, not, which is what our show is normally about today.
Fireside Alliance Guests and Podcast Focus
00:00:51
Speaker
I'm here to talk with some folks from the Fireside Alliance. We're going to be talking about a completely different game. It'll probably be in the title, so I'm not going to belabor it anymore. We're going to talk about Civilization, specifically Civilization 5, maybe others. We'll see where the conversation goes. But I'm going to do this quick intro that we can bring in the guests, and they can kind of intro themselves in the shows.
00:01:14
Speaker
um for
Sponsor Acknowledgment: Granny Coffee Company
00:01:15
Speaker
regulars of the goblin lord podcast please bear with me as well because i'm gonna kind of intro our show a little bit with with three people people four people from three different shows figure we might have some audience crossovers so it'd be a good chance to introduce so i'm alex my pronouns are he him um this is the goblin lord podcast we tend to talk about magic we talk about
00:01:35
Speaker
the card game Magic the Gathering. We talk about Lauren's story, but really we want to talk about the community. We talk about mental health and other real-world topics. We kind of want to use the game to relate to that stuff.
Host Introduction and Mental Health Break
00:01:48
Speaker
I'm going to shout out our big sponsor before I forget, because I tend to, and then have to say it at the end, and then I always feel bad. So I want to talk about the Granny Coffee Company. They're a black, minority, LGBTQ owned, and ran coffee company that likes to sponsor gamers. They have been sponsoring us for a couple of years. We're very happy to have them sponsor us. I, myself, am not much of a coffee drinker, but Hobbs is. He loves the stuff. I love hearing his stories about all the great coffee he gets.
00:02:18
Speaker
and they donate stuff when we do charity events. They're just a wonderful sponsor. We love them. Excuse me. There's a link for them in our link tree that'll be in the show notes if you want to check them out.
00:02:29
Speaker
So then for myself, I said my name and pronouns, my personal handle line. I'm on Twitter. Sometimes I'm actually taking a break right now for mental health. But if you do want to reach out, I'm at mil, m-e-l underscore chronicler.
Two Shrinks Pod: Exploring Psychology and Fiction
00:02:44
Speaker
I check my messages every so often. So if you do reach out, I can see you there. And then I'm going to just hand it off. I was going to make an intro question, and I forgot to make an intro question.
00:02:55
Speaker
So how about hand it off to Hunter and Amy to introduce yourselves and your show here.
00:03:02
Speaker
Well g'day listeners, my name is Hunter and we're from Australia as you can probably tell from our rather thick accent. So we are Amy and I'll let Amy say hello. Hi, I'm Amy. We're from Two Shrinks Pod. It's a podcast all about psychology. So we're two psychologists and our show, we get together and we talk about different psychological topics, do big long deep dives into
00:03:29
Speaker
the research. So if you wanted to hear about, like, it's pitched at a high level because I think people actually respond to that. And so the kind of topics we do, we really kind of randomly choose things, don't we? What do we do?
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, we cover everything from specific diagnoses, like personality disorders or social anxiety. And then we hop over to things like Star Wars and diagnosing the characters. And then we'll go to social stuff or things that affect us every day, like anger or crying. Yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, so and I guess like our most recent, to give you an idea, our most recent episode was on psychology of abortion, so where we looked at, which is incredibly serious topic, but also we thought it was really relevant. We looked at the psychology around decision making, we looked at whether there were any mental health negative impacts of for a woman who has an abortion, and it doesn't seem to be any long term effects, which is really good.
00:04:32
Speaker
And also the impact on women who denied one. I mean, so that's the kind of like depth that we would go into. But like as Amy said, we've done some other, I guess, more light hearted ones. So we did an episode on the movie, The Breakfast Club, where we
00:04:49
Speaker
uh talked about how we would do what would happen if the breakfast club characters from the breakfast club um movie by John Hughes if they all came to therapy rather than detention and what would you do with them so that was a lot of fun and um and i might just mention our star wars episode which was uh it's a two-hour magnum opus where we um
00:05:11
Speaker
mount a convincing case that Luke Skywalker has stress-induced psychosis. And we have, you know, some other like deep dives into like the attachment style of Kylo Ren and, you know, what scheme does Rey have and things like that. So if you are interested in psychology, our podcast is something for you. That's probably why I say it. I'm Hihim.
00:05:38
Speaker
And, uh, I'm on Twitter, real Hunter M, M, M, I think. There's several M's. Yeah. I think I made that handle because I was like, oh, Donald Trump's going to, you know, at real Donald Trump. And that was before he became like an absolute, well, he was always a tool, but anyway. Or you can contact me via the show Twitter, which is at two shrinks pond.
Leftover Army Monsters: Kaiju and Tokusatsu
00:06:00
Speaker
That's it. So that's us. Cool. And Dan.
00:06:05
Speaker
I guess that's to me. I'm Dan Heppner. I'm one of the hosts on the leftover armies.
00:06:11
Speaker
Leftover Army Monsters, Giant Podcasts, All Out of Tech Podcasts. It's me. I have my co-host, Amanda Albers, Eric Maribel, and Thierry Gibson. I see him, by the way. And every episode, we are diving into a different movie within the Kaijou Tokusatsu genre. That can be stuff stretching from your classic Godzilla, Gamora, Ultraman, going into Power Rangers.
00:06:37
Speaker
moving over to non-kaiju stuff like War in Space, which is a recent episode, or the Seeking of Japan series. And also obviously stuff from like the 50s atomic horror, black and white creature features and all kinds of stuff within all that realm. There's a lot of things that you might not think are in there, but they fall in there. Yeah, sometimes it's us really diving deep into the interesting aspects of a particularly good movie.
00:07:07
Speaker
Or other times it's just, you know, just dumping on it for about 45 minutes to an hour, maybe under an hour in those cases. You can tell if we like the movie by how long the episode is usually. But, you know, so it's a very simple, uh, preface and everything. Um, you can find me on Twitter at mighty Megatron zero, cause I don't believe in any sort of branding consistency whatsoever.
Focus Shift: Civilization Game Discussions
00:07:30
Speaker
Uh, and, uh, yeah, I mean, that's, that's it. I don't have a lot to say at the beginning here.
00:07:37
Speaker
I appreciate that, Dan. I have a different name and login for every electronic thing I could possibly sign up for because I didn't think very far ahead. Unlike my co-host, Hobbs, who actually is at Hobbs' queue on just about everything because he apparently came up with a brand early and figured that out and was able to keep that going, and I've always been jealous of that.
00:08:00
Speaker
But okay, so cool. I appreciate, love heaven y'all here. We've been talking. So, and just to lay this out, we're not, we're talking civilization, civilization board games, video games, excuse me. I know there's a board game. I haven't played it, but it would be interesting that I, okay. So just a warning, which I didn't give the three of you, but our show has no rails. So it is very difficult to get off the rail because it has none. They were never installed.
00:08:28
Speaker
is a big zoning issue. Much less of rails, and we're just launching you out of a catapult. In traditional goblin fashion and magic, they legitimately launch each other out of cannons sometimes. You run out of ammunition, but you have plenty of cousins, you've got plenty of ammunition.
00:08:47
Speaker
Let's go into, um, I realized I was going to revisit the, the Sid Meier, uh, book that he wrote, um, an autobiography or memoir. And I forgot to, well, I forgot to, I kind of just kept not doing it this week. So we were going to talk a little bit about the history of the series and I don't remember a lot, but, um, figure we have a list of stuff we want to just talk. Does anyone have one that, um, this particularly jumps out to you to start with?
00:09:16
Speaker
Uh, like in terms of a question. Yeah. In terms of the questions, cause we got a lot of questions here just for the audience. We got a lot of questions we prepared beforehand, but for the most part, I think we're going to try to just have a conversation. If that sounds good to everybody.
00:09:29
Speaker
So if we have questions, we're going to try to hit some of these. We'll talk about this. So actually, why don't I just jump in with one here. So how we first got into the series. Well, since I'm talking, I'll just keep this going because inertia. Actually, I started playing the first Civilization. It was actually the very first one I played, though I did not play it very much. This was a game that when I was
00:09:55
Speaker
young, four or five years old, maybe younger. I don't believe I could read. So I was pretty young. Like really much. And but he I just happened to be at my uncle's house and we were doing something and he was playing the game. And so his he's trying to explain this to me, it sounded like the most incredible thing.
00:10:16
Speaker
And I don't know how he explained it to me. It's been so long. I can't remember. But I remember that it just being so I thought this was incredible. This game that was about everything. And and so then he I know I sat there while he played some and I remember.
00:10:34
Speaker
telling him he should do horse riding every time he had an opportunity to research a new tech because I thought nights were cool and he kept telling me that it was not strategically a good idea. No, because horse riding like leads you into a dead end and cul-de-sac of the tech.
00:10:50
Speaker
Exactly. And so he kept not doing it and I got really frustrated because he's not gonna have nights and this isn't cool. And so I did eventually get a copy of the first game that I played briefly in an older computer, but it wasn't until Civ IV that I really got into the game. And that's, I got it shortly after it came out.
00:11:12
Speaker
I had a better computer at the time, and then I really dived. I dived deep into four. I played a good amount of five, and I've also played a lot of six since I came up. But how about y'all? How did some of you get started in the series?
00:11:26
Speaker
Well, I played, I played Civ I back in the 90s on my 386. I think it was a friend of mine. I copied it onto some floppy disks and then took it home and I was thinking about this. I was hooked on it straight away and I remember.
00:11:45
Speaker
one sort of spring morning and I just got the game and I got up early, got myself ready for school, dressed in the school uniform and started playing from like 6am and before anyone else was up.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think I got like the Darwin's voyage wonder and I never built that and you get like two tech advances and yeah, I think ever since then, Siv has been part of my life and I would like, I would, you know, I've done a lot of university study and so there was periods of time where I could, I've just had not been able to have it on my computer.
00:12:22
Speaker
Um, because it's like, if you, if basically for me, if I have it on my computer, like in, and, or if I've got a game going, I, I will have to finish that game. And then, um, and I've definitely gone through periods where I've deleted the game. And I think even I had sieve two and I remember snapping the CD wrong. So I couldn't play it because I needed to get work done.
00:12:46
Speaker
stream measures. Yeah. And then I think I didn't play for a really long time. You know, you get married and your wife doesn't want you to do things like that. And then I think, yeah, I think I bootlegged Civ 4 and then I bought Civ 5 and I'm stuck on Civ 5. Love it.
00:13:05
Speaker
And I'm going to, I'm just, can I just introduce Amy's? Amy's, I'm going to, so I've got Amy into, Amy, Amy into Civ. And so I'll just, I'll give you an idea of some of the conversations that led that led this to happen.
00:13:21
Speaker
She was messaging me about, this is in 2019, about like, you know, podcasting and like, can we catch up for a podcast? And I said, oh, look, I haven't done any prep. I was playing civilization for the last three nights.
00:13:36
Speaker
Instead of doing prep, I wiped all other civilizations off the planet. I feel pleased somehow. She's Amy. That sounds darkly satisfying. I said righteous. She's like powerful. I'm like the last city was an island in the Pacific and I nuked it twice and accidentally erased it from existence rather than having to land a tank on it. It was satisfying.
00:13:55
Speaker
And then she said, well, your enjoyment of nuclear war is worrying. And I'm like, I'm just cleansing my enemies with nuclear fire. Just play one game and you'll understand. And then she and the final conversation ends with her saying, well, that's what stopped me. I'd enjoy it too much and never leave the house again.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah and cut to two months later I think I started playing and yeah so Hunter insisted I start with the Sip 1 and come to grips with that before going anywhere else. He wanted to instruct me on how to play the entire thing but I told him that I learned better by doing and so he was incredibly frustrated for
00:14:38
Speaker
a long time watching me scrub, but I figured it out. And then I played five and six. I recently had a really bad bout of COVID. I was off work for almost two months.
00:14:53
Speaker
And towards the end, I, you know, I was well enough to start doing things, but I couldn't move or talk without having breathing issues. And so I think I clocked 40 hours a week on SIM for a couple of weeks. Just a full-time job there for a while.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. And the point where I think I sort of came unstuck at the start was that I really love books like a little bit too much. And once I learnt with Sif One that you could build libraries, I was putting all my effort into building libraries so much that I kept on getting attacked and losing the game because I had no units over libraries. So it's been love for a while.
00:15:42
Speaker
Okay, so I'm gonna, as I said at the showing, at the top, I can't be real, but I'm gonna be real anyway and ask you, Amy, are you a fan of anime? On and off, I've tried a bit, but not a huge fan.
00:15:58
Speaker
There's a show that you might enjoy that I have loved so much that I went and started reading all the novels. It's called A Sentence of a Bookworm. It's about a character who is completely obsessed with books. She is going to be a librarian and then during an earthquake a bookshelf falls over and she dies.
00:16:18
Speaker
And then is like, is not reborn, but kind of brought to this other world and wakes up as like this five year old child in a world in a fantasy world.
00:16:29
Speaker
where books are incredibly expensive, made by hand, the objects of royalty and the upper crust, and she is just the child of a guardsman. And so she goes on, she decides her quest is to make her own books then. And it's this whole thing about this book obsessed person who, I love it, I love
Civilization's Addictive Nature and Strategies
00:16:52
Speaker
it so much. That's right up my alley, yeah.
00:16:54
Speaker
Sorry. Dan, how about yourself? How'd you get started with this? So, as Jordan says, everybody was going through, I'm trying to figure out a timeline here. I got into it with Civilization II, and it had to have been, because I've released in 1996, it had to have been that same year. So it would have been at some point in the year it came out, but a friend of mine who
00:17:15
Speaker
We did a lot of sleepovers at his place because he had a pool. He was playing at one of the times that came over. I'm like, oh, hey, what's this? And then for most of the weekend, we stayed inside, even though it was summer, and played this and played Civ II and everything. Then after that weekend, I was like, I need to get it for myself. I think it was the babbages at the time. I don't remember so many different things that have come and gone over the years.
00:17:41
Speaker
Found it, bought it, and sold it on our Windows, that must have been like 95 or whatever. Played it constantly, eventually got the Fantastic Worlds expansion for it, played a bunch of that and everything.
00:17:58
Speaker
Hit High School kind of dropped off on it for a while, found it again in college, in freshman year of college. And sure, I'll attribute it to one of the many reasons why I didn't get very far. But there's a lot of other things, but we'll throw that in the bag as well.
00:18:18
Speaker
Fell then after that for a period of time, fell off of it for a long while. Just was going through a lot of stuff in life for a long while. Got back into it in five and then played some five. I've waited till like the big Brave New World expansions and everything kind of came out and then dove back into it a bit more and Gods and Kings and then have really gotten really back into it with six. So it's been an on and off, but I've always enjoyed it. I mean, I think
00:18:47
Speaker
you know, this might help segue into one of the questions like what is, you know, what is it about this franchise that everybody, at least the four of us here really enjoy is that like, it's a very relaxing game. And that has bursts of like excitement and really interesting micromanage. But then you can kind of just be coasting on it for long stretches of time. And like,
00:19:11
Speaker
doing other things that you maybe need to be doing like a responsible human being might do once in a while. Not always, but once in a while.
00:19:19
Speaker
So I do want to get to that, but another question occurred to me that I don't think we have in this list. So just out of curiosity, what speed of game do y'all use? Actually, you know what? I'm going to take another step back. I realized we dived right in and started talking Civ Talk, which is great. But I do want to just give a little bit of context for people who aren't as familiar with the game, maybe have heard of it, but don't know the structures of it. Probably helpful. It is a turn-based strategy game, meaning
00:19:46
Speaker
You get your turn, you do all of the actions that are available to you, and then you press go, and then all the computer turns happen, and then it comes back to your turn. You have as much time to think about what you want to do until you set those actions in, and then you hit go.
00:20:01
Speaker
It's supposed to, as the name suggests, civilization start from the beginning of human society and run all the way into the future. The far off, super distant year of 2050, which is maybe not as far off as it used to be anymore.
00:20:17
Speaker
And then I don't see dead giant death robots on the horizon in real world. So I mean Actually future fans still waiting on the motherboards. I'm waiting on robots So, you know, we'll wait they're waiting with the Terminator fans too and that should have taken over about five years ago anyway That's that's a whole other fandom
00:20:38
Speaker
Depends on which timeline we're talking about. Originally supposed to be the far off year of 1997. If you could build a Skynet world one day, that'd be pretty sweet. Oh my god.
00:20:50
Speaker
There is an internet wonder, which game is that? Okay, so the general structure, each of these different games has some different systems and things they change, but all of them have the basic structures of your cities, your cities have buildings, different structures you build, like libraries.
00:21:09
Speaker
The great library. Yeah. And then there's, yeah, then there's wonders, like the great library, the pyramids, things that are like unique stuff that can be built. I'm curious though, Amy, if you don't get the great library, do you just save scrub and start over? Pretty much. All right, good to know. I get a furious text message. Yeah. So and so stole it from me again.
00:21:34
Speaker
We did during the lockdowns in the pandemic, we worked out how to play multiplayer, which was a little challenge because of I'm a Mac user and she's not. And then it was just always like a race to see which one of us was going to get the great life reverse. And I was devastated whenever he got it. I just, I wanted to slam my computer shut and go like, I'm not playing with you anymore. Just you know what, you win.
00:22:01
Speaker
I used to
00:22:18
Speaker
hundred or two hundred turns later because I could see where my empire was when I built it and it was like the coolest thing for me. And so I would restart the game sometimes and I missed it. Though there were some times where I missed it to my own fault because I decided I needed to build a city in a particular place so that the shape would be a certain shape. It was, there was a whole thing for a little while. That's odd. That's odd. I love it.
00:22:43
Speaker
My civilization is going to be the form of a dick. We are a fan, like completely jumping forward, you know, because there's the different units in the great general, the great general and how you can steal land by using like the citadel or something you make. And that is particularly satisfying to like plant that right next to someone else's like city and take their land. They seem to get very annoyed by that. I don't know why.
00:23:12
Speaker
Okay, so why is it so addictive? Dan talked a little bit. I think for me, at least I can say for me, one of the things that's the most engaging for this game is
00:23:22
Speaker
All of them, while some of them change up what exactly each system is within the game, all of them have multiple systems running in parallel that intersect in different ways. And it's a thing that I've learned about myself in the last few years that with video games in particular, one of the things I like the most, one of the things I engage the most with them is if they have systems
00:23:46
Speaker
interlocking systems that I can really dig into. And like, if that's what gets my interest, it's not just this one thing, I want this one thing to affect this other thing, which also affects this other thing. So I have to plan out my route for A, B and C, because then all of those will build together into whatever strategy I want to do.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, and I think building on that, you're planning the whole time. You're thinking ahead the whole time, and it's this constant. On Civ V, it says, do you want to keep playing after you've finished the game, won the game, says just one more turn.
00:24:29
Speaker
And that really gets to the essence of the game because you're thinking about like, well, what are you going to build next and where are you going to go? And with Civ 5 particularly, but even with Civ 1, you know, like where Civ 1 you could win by world domination or by sending a spaceship to Alpha Centauri.
00:24:48
Speaker
Whereas, you know, in Su 5, you know, you've got the diplomatic victory, time victory, culture, science and world domination. I think I don't think there's anything else. So there's all these different ways of winning.
00:25:03
Speaker
But even, you know, there's a period of time in the game where you might not even be focused on what way you're going to win. You're just sort of focused on, you know, keeping your civilization happy or functioning or out of a war or in a war. And it requires us a lot of focus. And I was explaining to someone this week saying, you know,
00:25:23
Speaker
a sieve in the evening with a good podcast or something, and you can just sit there and it is, I think what you were saying before, it's just calming. You can just be really in the moment. It's absorbing. It's absorbing. And I think for me as a psychologist, I spend a lot of my day responding to people, which is
00:25:46
Speaker
you know, I enjoy, but it's taxing. And whereas I find that this is just like, I'm just in my own zone. And I do love the challenge of figuring out how to kind of do stuff or kind of overcome something.
00:26:00
Speaker
Now that hits on something really kind of important is, you know, we all, especially nowadays, we're all adults here. We all have jobs and careers and family and bills and this and that, right? So we all have a lot of things that tax our tank throughout the day, our gas tank for ourselves and everything. And it's a game where
00:26:23
Speaker
you can really go at it however engaged or unengaged you want to and the game works on both levels or anything in between really because you have these spurts where especially like early game stuff it's like it's very engaging you really have to kind of pick and choose every little plan early on really carefully just to sort of establish everything and like okay so i want to send a settler
00:26:50
Speaker
right over there because I want that to be a big production city or I want to send them over here with all that farmland and everything and plants and everything so I can get a lot of agriculture in there and then start setting up trade routes for them to go and supply the production city because they're not going to have as much food and so forth. So all your early stuff especially is very micromanaging and engaging, but
00:27:13
Speaker
You can take as much time as you want to on it. It's a game that at any moment in the middle of your turn, on someone else's turn, whenever you can step away for it for an hour or more, come back to it and just be like, all right. So where was I? Right. I was doing this. Right. And you also then buy like mid game and usually around mid game or so, you have a lot of those times where like,
00:27:37
Speaker
You know, you have your A, B, and C plans of how you want some of these different path routes and productions and wonders and this and that to kind of coalesce into like a big push for whatever strategy you're going for. And you might not even have known what it was when you started out or even until recently. Sometimes a lot of times these things just sort of happenstance like, oh, you know what?
00:27:59
Speaker
this is actually a really good setup for this and maybe you deviate away from what your initial plan was or whatever but by the mid game you have good stretches of time as well or like unless you're just constantly militarizing and fighting somebody you have stretches where you're just kind of
00:28:16
Speaker
working on your cities and researching this and moving this over here, whatever, and just setting up for the later game stuff. And then you can just kind of really, not necessarily tune out from it, but it allows, it's, you can either have that be the focus in something like a podcast being a distraction or vice versa. And have this be the distraction focusing on the podcast or news for the day or whatever, you know, you're listening to NPR or whatever you're doing, right?
00:28:45
Speaker
It's a good way you're cooking dinner, even a good example. It's a good way where you can kind of just come in and out of it and it's accessible to you at whatever level of interest or intricacy you want to play it as.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah. And that's, I've, there's a lot of, I've done a lot of watching shows, especially, you know, like you said, cause you can just step away. I can do whatever I'm doing. If there's a moment I can look away from ITV. I picked my turn and there's especially, and I realized I asked a question, never answered it. And then we kind of lost it. But like, I tend to play in one of the longest stretches I can, which I think is marathon.
00:29:26
Speaker
which makes the, it adds so many more turns. Like the game, a game takes so long, which creates more of that space in between. So ultimately it just means things take a little bit longer to do, but it gives more space in between for you to kind of have other things overlapping without having as many things in any given turn. Because a building rather than taking 50 turns, you know, rather than taking 10 turns, it might take 15 turns or 20 turns.
00:29:53
Speaker
But if I have 10, 15 cities and I have however many workers or ships that are exploring this area or whatever it is, if you're playing on the longer timelines, I can't remember what the setting is called in the game, but you're playing those longer games, it just creates a little more space in between there, which makes it easier, at least for me, to do something like just watch a show, watch a movie,
00:30:18
Speaker
And, you know, every now and then look over and go, oh, it's my turn. I have nothing to do. Hit enter. And then it just kicks on to the next turn and go back to what I'm doing. I can tell you like a Aaron Sorkin style West Wing kind of show is a perfect pairing for this kind of a game because it's also thematic. You know, you have political stuff going on or whatever, but any of those kinds of shows, ones that like maybe it's not, you know, don't be watching like
00:30:44
Speaker
you know, the latest Marvel show necessarily. That's what we've done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen to a lot of like crime podcasts or exactly stuff about that, like really gets into something sciencey or whatever while playing Ziv. So that sense of like being completely engrossed in in space. What do you think what I mean? What do you think makes it so addictive or kind of draws you in?
00:31:12
Speaker
I think it's that thing of like you have a plan and there's a part of you that doesn't want to stop until you see whether that plan actually works. And it, there's also no natural stopping point. So there's always a sense of like, oh, but I was working on this next thing. Like I could just keep on, I haven't done that yet.
00:31:32
Speaker
I think I took off the, you know, there's a button where you can press, like, you know, next turn, enter. And I, you can switch that off just to like, cause I was like, well, that's just, it's going to save me some time. But then that is, that is a slippery slopelessness.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, because you don't have to pause and think about if you want to next turn or not, it's happening. Oh shit, it's happened. And I think what I like about it is that challenges pop up so you'll have a plan. Like I was playing a game recently and I was probably like, I was probably the number two civilization and then the number one civilization was the Egyptians really started to pull ahead. And I was like, well, I'm going to have to take them down.
00:32:16
Speaker
Time to kill them. That's just how it is. Yeah, and so my strategy is always to try and knock out their capital first, right? And so I marshaled everything. I'm like, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do this and kind of
00:32:34
Speaker
you know, plotted it and it, you know, that takes, you know, that takes a couple of hours, right? You know, to kind of sail all the ships up there and kind of get it. And then, you know, I've managed to kind of get the diplomatic situation so that, um, and it like actually kind of work it because it's not really well explained how to kind of do all that stuff in the game. And, um, you know, denounce them and then everyone else denounced them because they were the number one and then everyone ganged up on them and I talked them out.
00:33:00
Speaker
And then that, and then the rest of the game was mine, essentially. But, you know, that was not a plan thing. Like, and I was trying to play a game where I wasn't being, you know, I was not trying to win my culture, I think. And then it takes away your resources from all those other things you were planning. If you get stuck in battles or in a game where everybody's declaring war against them over and over again, and you can't actually advance anything, you're kind of stuck in defense mode.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, I think, and I had won a game recently where I chose an ideology and everyone else chose a different one. And geez, it was a battle. It was so tough. And it was, and I was playing on, I generally play on standard speed. Sorry. I was, I've come back to that question.
00:33:44
Speaker
Um, but I, but, and I've, I've only, I've recently kind of started playing at the harder levels, like King level, I think it is. Um, and cause I wasn't confident enough, like even though I played it a lot, like I was, I was like, but, and that's proving to be really interesting challenge. Cause I, you know, they took my resources away from me and, and, and I managed to, you know,
00:34:04
Speaker
I managed to win even though they embargoed me and stuff like that. But geez, that was a tough fight. And then what was interesting about C5 is if you go back and replay and you go back to an old save game and replay it in a different strategy, the outcome is completely different, the AI is different. And I think there's so much depth to this game, which I've been playing it for so long and I still find out new things about how to kind of new strategies, how to do stuff.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing, right? Especially because, like, certain civilizations, obviously, they tend to lean towards one thing or the other, and they all have their own little bits and bobbles that attribute to one thing over the other or whatever, right? And so, you know, you usually will pick a civilization based on like, okay, well, I'm kind of feeling like a science victory, so I'm gonna pick
00:34:55
Speaker
you know somebody a civilization that's very got extra science bonuses and this and that right but then yeah sometimes halfway through the game something changes or somebody gets way out of line and then like your whole gameplay strategy changes and just kind of adapt to that you're like well i was trying to just go colonize another planet but now i just i'm just going to be the lord of the ashes on this one
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly on that. I was like, I texted Amy and said, you know, Genghis Khan needed to be taught a lesson. I mean, of course. Well, the Mongols should be thankful they didn't die in the nuclear fires that befell the Persian Empire.
00:35:37
Speaker
Yeah, but the boggles look to the person like add their week. We're way stronger than that. Are you though? I'm pretty sure your body burns the same. So much needless aggression to historical figures. Yeah. No, and I think probably one of to maybe even segue into another thing, one of my favorite all time stories. And I honestly, I can't remember if this was Civ IV or V.
00:36:00
Speaker
Um, but there was one where I was like, I'm going to do, I think it was a cultural, I really wanted to do a cultural victory. Cause I generally, I, cause again, systems person. So I like the infrastructure. I like to do cultural stuff. I like to build up my cities. I'll build the armies and I'll march them across if I have to, but that's not my first choice. And so I was trying as a plan in a, a set up or was two large continents. And so I ended up taking.
00:36:27
Speaker
Somehow I got most of the continent that I was on. Maybe it was four, because in four, unlike five and four, cities don't have any defense until you put units in there. It's just the units. So what I ended up becoming my strategy for a while when I was trying to climb up difficulties was to right away immediately build a bunch of warriors and then just my nearest neighbor take their capital. And now I have twice the space that anyone else has.
00:36:52
Speaker
And so it might have been, but anyway, so I had most of this one continent and I was doing my culture thing and then someone was pulling ahead on the other continent. Fortunately, the number two on the other continent had been a friend of mine for a while.
00:37:06
Speaker
So I decided to- Hey, go kill them for me. Exactly. I started just giving them technology and just giving them stuff, like sailing units over and just dropping them in their territory and just giving them tanks. Like, here you go. And it was a lot of fun. It was a very different way. I'd never really played like that, but it was a lot of fun to just kind of have that emergent thing and go, oh,
00:37:31
Speaker
I can just do this. I can just give them stuff and they'll go fight the people I don't like. Yeah. And then, you know, like with Civ V, with it, you know, you get that happiness penalty when you get, you know, when you take over cities. And, um, once I was playing a game last night and, you know, we all declared war on Gandhi. Um, actually someone suggested, I didn't start at this time, right? That's right. But yeah, it is right. That sounds really defensive.
00:37:59
Speaker
But, you know, and then and then, you know, I was shelling one of the cities, but I didn't want to take it. And then I think Japan took, you know, one of the cities and then, you know, so like it's sort of you can you can be flexible about the way you play and sort of still get the outcome you want. But then, you know, if you're tactical about it, then.
00:38:18
Speaker
you can avoid some of the downsides. And I find that sort of elegance of the game, you know, rather, you know, versus say other, you know, games you might play with, you know, Fortnite, there's not much elegance to it, right? Or, you know, that kind of stuff. So.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, and it's one of the other games that I really got into.
Late-game Strategies and AI Challenges
00:38:41
Speaker
When I was younger, that is very different, but Handsome Civilized was like the Starcraft being a real-time strategy game. That was a game for a stretch. Once I started to get better, at least for myself, I was never good. But when I realized, at least for me at the time, the way to get good was to master my keyboard shortcuts so that I could just
00:39:01
Speaker
accelerate my beginning and just have the same, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, because this lets me build this, this, this, this, this. And I was just getting that down. Civilization is a very different game. And so that's where, you know, then starting to place it, especially now I'm a little older, and I don't want to have to deal with all that nonsense. And
00:39:23
Speaker
the the sort of the twitch have to be able to react right now so i love a game especially i think five is what really kicked it up six it continued this as well i don't think four did as well um did as good as five did where it just there's a window pane which by the way i actually played the game i played a civ five game like two weeks ago or
00:39:43
Speaker
within the last week or so, and managed to lose because I forgot to aim for a victory. But if you remember, which I usually do around halfway, and this time I didn't until about, you know, five-eighths or seven-eighths maybe, other way through the game, there's a pain that tells you all of the different ways to win, where you are compared to everyone else, and what you have to do. It is, at least for me, again with the systems thing, it's a great
00:40:10
Speaker
way to sort of simplify that. Especially early on, you only had one or two ways to win. You won the space race, you conquered everybody else. You took over all of their cities. That was about it. Those were easy to track. But then as the game has added, as the series has added new ways to win, which I think is great because it lets you play in different ways, as we've all been saying too. It lets you kind of
00:40:34
Speaker
start with one plan, go into a different plan as opportunities and things present themselves. But CivVive in particular has a really good way to track that if you remember. The question that I was thinking, and Amy and I were talking about it, and I'm kind of why I'm really, you know, why I suggested that we get together and talk about this stuff is because, you know, I don't know that many people play it. I'm really interested in strategy. So
00:41:03
Speaker
I was kind of curious, like, uh, Amy was saying that she's got a particular way that she starts early games and maybe let her explain that. And then maybe ask you guys, like, what's your, what's your kind of like early game strategy, Amy? Yeah. Cause I was, I started a new game last night and I was noticing that like in the first 80, a hundred turns, I don't actually think through what I'm doing anymore because I do the same every time.
00:41:33
Speaker
All about the books, no. Well, that is part of it. But then also, you know, it's things like the first unit I build now is always a scout. And before I build anything else in that city, whereas when I initially started playing, it was always a monument first. And I think I kind of get into this rhythm of it of how I want to start setting things up. I pick the same
00:41:55
Speaker
social policies for those for that cluster of turns as well in the same order. And then once it gets to that sort of 80, 100 turn mark, then it diversifies depending on what's going on around me. So what's your, what's your, this is where we become psychologists. Sorry guys. Like what's your goal early game?
00:42:14
Speaker
early game is, um, getting a good, a good setup, getting any extra tech boosts I can. So that's why the scouts so that then if there's relics around the place that have extra tech, then those, um, getting a good starting spot. Although that one I always agonize over. It's always, you know, do you just pick where you close to where you land?
00:42:37
Speaker
Yes, no, that's contentious, guys. Do you, when first, first, the first thing, do you move your settler or do you build on the same spot straight away? It depends on if it's a good spot or not, really. I'll be honest, if it's not, if I can't find a good spot within the first like two or three moves, I'm going to say it's grab and restart.
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah, I tend, frankly, I tend to do one or two moves or just build it where it is. Like if I see something like, I want to be there, I'll move one or two, but otherwise I'll just start it mostly because I don't want to think about it.
00:43:16
Speaker
I just want to start playing, at least for myself. That's where, um, with some of those early things that you can, you can end up a bit behind if you wander around for too long. It doesn't feel like it would matter too much, but it seems to. Yeah. It matters because you get the.
00:43:34
Speaker
you waste that time. So everything you have comes out a couple turns late and early that sacks very quickly because everybody's kind of feeling out the immediate surrounding area. So you're not you're a couple turns behind, theoretically, or potentially on staking claim to new lands, especially if you're near somebody new, finding a city state and getting that relationship going.
00:43:56
Speaker
uh yeah finding like tribal villages or whatever depending on which game you're playing and either getting relics or an extra unit or whatever or tech boosts and so forth so a lot of that is why like yeah you got to establish very quickly and everything because you're all pretty even at the start right and then yeah and then once i've learned one basic warrior unit yeah uh and like yeah i always turn barbarians off i can't
00:44:19
Speaker
I find that a waste of time. It depends. I actually usually, and I play a lot more six than I did five. I usually do leave barbarian time just because I mean, by like late early game, they become just a constant nuisance. So I don't, yeah, I understand the reason to turn it off, but the
00:44:40
Speaker
extra stuff you get from especially if when the ones keep popping up near you have taken them out if you're able to take them out quickly enough. It helps with like extra gold and like faith in some cases, that's right, you're going and everything. But yeah, no, barbarians are freaking pain. Yeah, I'm not sure I've ever actually played with them off. And for me, one of the things I tend to be less aggressive as
00:45:06
Speaker
Well, I should say less aggressive against other civilizations. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that when I'm interacting with them, there's a photo. And so there's there's they feel a little more real and persony to me than just the barbarians who walk around trying to kill anything that I have that's out and about. So like the early for me, the barbarians early game tend to be how I level up my military units to keep my military from being too far behind everyone else's.
00:45:35
Speaker
I do like the upgrading because that was not something that was in the early Civ I and II. I didn't really play much of III. The way I think about it, Civ I and Civ II are kind of similar games, even though Civ II is a very great expansion. And then Civ III to Civ V is kind of their
00:46:00
Speaker
They've built the world slightly differently and operates, you know, these resources and lands and borders and things. But, you know, the upgrades, like I really enjoy, like with the ranged units, like the frigates and the artillery and anything with a range, you know, when you can
00:46:22
Speaker
That upgrade to extra damage versus city defenses. Yeah. And like, but also like extra distance so you can really, you can see site range. Once you get like a fleet of battleships that's got like extra range, you're, you're practically invincible. Um, you know, and that's, you can just sail around the world like locusts kind of just.
00:46:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, I did like whatever I'm going to war with anybody. Yeah. Like once you're in that tech era, it's nice because it's just they have a war on two fronts, one on land on one end and one by sea on the other. If they don't match up to each other and just slowly whittle everybody down.
00:47:02
Speaker
I think, I was saying to Amy, gosh, it really makes me sound able, but you know, the elegance of a nuclear first strike from a sub, just, you know, I think it shows courteousness and respect to your opponents that you put that much tech and effort into.
00:47:23
Speaker
delivering that kind of thing. That is an interesting way of looking at it. I've never quite considered that particular aspect of it before, but I might not fully agree, but I see where you're coming from. Another random question. Have any of you ever played the game Alpha Centauri?
00:47:47
Speaker
Nice. That's the space one where you play the next tech from it. No. Yes. Because there's two. There's Beyond Earth, which is the more recent one, which was the sci-fi one built on the Civ V engine. Alpha Centauri came out earlier. It's supposed to be a sequel because that's the whole of the science victory is you build a colony ship that goes to the Alpha Centauri system.
00:48:14
Speaker
Well, this was supposed to be the story of that's what happens to this colony ship. It shows up on this planet. Yeah. The nukes in Alpha Centauri literally changed the landscape. I played a little bit of it, a tiny bit of it when it first came out. I remember almost nothing, but I remember that.
00:48:32
Speaker
Remember that? Yeah. Cause that's the, that's the thing that sticks in your mind. I remember that. I remember, um, one of the things with nuking people like, yeah, we're going to turn your capital into a crater. And then in the opposite, sorry, you literally turned it into a crater. Yeah. And, and, and that one, I remember too, you could build your own units. Like you could customize, there was a, here's your tank, but then it was like, okay, do you want to, you know, add different weapons onto it or change the armor, make it lighter, make it, you know, whatever you want to do.
00:49:01
Speaker
and create your own units. And again, I was a teenager at the time, but I would probably still do it today if I found that old game and put it on my computer. I kept trying to find what things could I shove a nuclear warhead into. And there's a few random things that you could actually shove a nuclear warhead into.
00:49:20
Speaker
I would totally be gay. The thing is, you never know when you're just going to need that glass option utility. Sometimes it's just going to come down to it and be like, all right, well, you know what? Nobody wins. It is funny because like, you know, I've definitely played games where like, you know, I'm definitely not, you know, like I've got this goal.
00:49:41
Speaker
And I'm going to be doing something and then you like, for whatever reason, like there'll be some civilization that has just been absolutely just so difficult to you the whole time. You're mining your own business. You're trying to be like, you know, you're not even trying to cover their lands or anything. And it's like, and as soon as you get the Nuke tech, you're like, you know what?
00:50:07
Speaker
This is what's happening. What, guys, guys, mid, mid game, what's your, what's your strategy mid game? Like, what are you, what are some of the things you wanted to kind of do? It's good to sound flippant, but I mean it legitimately. My mid game strategy is to find a strategy.
00:50:27
Speaker
No, I get that. And again, like I was saying, a lot of times your strategy will change mid game because of what other players, whether it's multiplayer or the AI is doing a lot of times. Cause I was going to say like, cause my early game strategy is always very much the same as you were saying, Amy, like you always build a scout first. I always build a slinger first because I have barbarians on. That's why. Yeah.
00:50:54
Speaker
But and but I saw I use them eventually I maybe sometimes get a scat a lot of times I don't ever really get a scat I end up getting one from like a tribal village or whatever but I
00:51:04
Speaker
to look around very quickly, spreading out, you know, north, south, east, west, and find it kind of to see where everybody else is near me and how much room I have to play with. And then I become very isolationist and just kind of like, I'm going to just do my thing. I'm going to build five, six, seven cities a decent distance away or, you know, waiting for the eventual growth when they're all like 80 tiles or whatever.
00:51:30
Speaker
And just, you know, kind of do that in foresight. And then just kind of mind my own business unless somebody starts something, you know, depends on who's my neighbor. But I usually try to just make friends with them just to like, all right, now you leave me alone, I leave you alone, go away. And very isolationist until yeah, around mid game. And that's usually when like, by that time, all right, I'm, you know,
00:51:56
Speaker
close to, if not having at least traversed the globe one way around in one specific line, if it's a category for it, and just kind of seeing where the rest of the continents are and what the landscape is and so forth, looking for like the larger islands. I usually go like continents and islands. It depends, you know, depends on everything on it.
00:52:17
Speaker
Yeah, by mid game, that is usually like, all right, now what am I actually trying to do? I tend to go for start game. I tend to gravitate towards civilizations that are science or culture victories, unless I just want to be super aggro and then I just go for a military war to just fight everybody and don't care. But I usually am science or culture.
00:52:45
Speaker
work towards that. And again, very isolationist, laissez-faire-ish. And then by mid-game, by that time, somebody's acting that right and being a problem. And if they're on my continent, now we got to fight. Otherwise, I don't care. That's going to be for late game.
00:53:00
Speaker
Yeah, I always toss up between do you cleanse your continent of other people or do you use that as an opportunity for trade? And for culture. And for cultural, yeah. And I think mid-game, I'm always...
00:53:17
Speaker
I'm always trying to get to be one of the World Congress people, like deciding the vote. I don't think I've ever managed to build whatever the world wonder is that gives you some, it gives you like an extra vote or two, but I certainly, like if you can control that early vote stuff, you can kind of
00:53:38
Speaker
you know, you can control the game a little bit. And it's the same with like, you know, if you are able to get a religion early. You put a lot more into religion than I do. Yeah. And then that can just kind of tip the balance a little bit. And also kind of I find that a little bit interesting because, you know, the early game, you know, like you sort of say, like there was the fun exploring element, which I really enjoy. Like I try and like I really enjoy sailing the ships around and kind of having a look.
00:54:08
Speaker
And they're just like, oh, the Galapagos Islands. Oh, yeah, that's it. That's it. You're like, oh, I discovered the Barrier Reef. Look at that. What's, what's Ayers Rock doing in the, you know, Uluru, I think is what we should call it. Not Ayers Rock, but you know, like, what's, what's, you know, I enjoy that bit like that. I think I've, you know, sending you missionaries out and kind of, and doing that kind of stuff. I find that. Spreading the good word.
00:54:32
Speaker
Yes. And then, you know, later on taking over a city and then sending an inquisitor in and cleansing the heat and religion from the city. I am curious as how everybody else approaches religion, because like my approach is I always try to make sure I establish one. Just I also almost always turn religious victory off. Just it's so annoying otherwise, right? Because you're constantly fighting back and forth. You end up having to vote so much to it. But I usually just establish one. So I have one.
00:55:02
Speaker
Because it just makes the eventual conquering process easier. Yeah, I reckon that's the difference between Civ V and VI for me. Because in Civ, like in both of them, I try and establish a religion. But in Civ V, because you can't win that way, I then, I don't put as much effort into it. Like initially in early game or in like the start of the middle period.
00:55:26
Speaker
I'll be sending people out and then I get distracted with other things and then just end up using the faith to buy other things. So like great people or whatever, rather than actually focusing on religion. Whereas with Civ VI, I've been trying to spread the religion a little bit more and I kind of like the religious combat element in Civ VI that you can get your missionaries and whatever to fight off against.
00:55:56
Speaker
This is why I think you'd love it. I did go for and did a religious victory just because I wanted the achievement really more than anything else. I did it one time. I'm never going to go for that specifically again. It's just so difficult just because
00:56:15
Speaker
You have to spend so much specifically on religion, having a religious center and building shrines and everything in every single city so that you're just pumping out faith constantly so that you can every turn buy another missionary or apostle or a guru and sending these guys out there. And some civilizations are happy to have you spread their religion. Most aren't, as it turns out, oddly enough.
00:56:45
Speaker
And of course people don't want to hear your good word. Because then they can also do like an emergency congress meeting and get everybody to try and ward off your religious people. So like it can turn into this whole world thing of everyone going like, why are you trying to spread?
00:57:06
Speaker
everywhere because the thing is like I feel like and I wonder if I hope that in of either an expansion or the next game they do something with this of like it'd be nice to be able to if you want to do a religious game to have it so that military units while not as much have some sort of religious spread to them as well because otherwise it's just pure religious combat between
00:57:34
Speaker
apostles and missionaries and gurus all day long and that's all there is and again just because you have to devote so much to that it makes you lack on a lot of other aspects of the game of production and science and culture and this and that so you end up devoting so much to it to where
00:57:53
Speaker
Anybody can be like, wow, that's fine. You can convert my capital city to this. I'm just going to roll over you with tanks now or whatever the current technological equivalent is. It's like, well, I have this archer.
00:58:09
Speaker
How's that do for you? Are you scared? Which is kind of the tricky balance in all of SIV really. That kind of what things do you prioritize? You can be doing really well with say going towards a science victory and then someone starts a war against you and you have to put all your efforts into military and changing the tech direction you were going in just to be able to defend yourself. And then it's gone.
00:58:35
Speaker
Yeah, I find sort of mid sort of the transition to mid to late game, like I find my tech direction, like it gets all really muddled for me. Like I'll stop having a clear direction and I'm like, am I trying to get the culture, like the tech advances that give me, you know, world wonders that then I can kind of be pumping out more culture and boosting my tourism and whatnot.
00:59:02
Speaker
Or is it like, you know, am I trying to get the bombers and am I trying to get the battleships and, you know, I think so. Any time after sort of frigates, like getting frigates, I think, if you're playing on an ocean map, then after that, I could start. I find it gets very confused for me and, you know,
00:59:22
Speaker
That's when it requires a lot of focus to play well. It's quite interesting, I think. Yeah. And it is an aspect of the other civilizations, especially your neighbors. They do, by mid to late game, they do have a strong influence on certain aspects of your gameplay. Because, yeah, you're just going for a science victory or a culture victory. And you glance over at your neighbor, you're like,
00:59:52
Speaker
Oh, they have that? Four steps behind that in the military units. It'd be really bad if they all of a sudden, oh, they're declaring war. Great. Yeah. You're like, oh crap, I've got to get some built some units in those units. I'm not gonna lie. I'm fine. I wish I like, in Civ I and even in Civ II, you could build like a diplomat or a spy unit and then you could go and steal tech very quickly. But like in Civ V, stealing tech is really, really hard.
01:00:21
Speaker
takes a while and you know that that does frustrate me um because you do want to kind of like you think well you know you could see it on the radio here on the radio on tv you probably learn about it but nope got a 50 turns yep well there's a difference between hearing about a battleship and knowing how to build one yeah yeah yeah fact shmacks how dare you bring real logic into this video game
01:00:49
Speaker
Another I found another thing in the mid game that tends to change the trajectory of what I'm doing is that's around when you start to find certain resources are popping on the map depending on where you effort. Oh, your aluminum your
01:01:04
Speaker
your uranium, you know, important for certain units and certain advances. And it's like, that's about when you start to find, okay, now I can see where all this, you know, aluminum is, and none of it's anywhere near me. All right, got to figure out how to get some. Yeah, I'm really aluminum and field deprived, but Germany right next door, they got a abundance of that. Yeah. Or that's about when I start to explore like the, you know, the Southern oceans and find these like arctic islands that are half frozen that
01:01:33
Speaker
happen to have one little spot of fish in the water and one thing of aluminum and it's like, guess I'm making a colony. There's also three barbarian camps. That's when you get the message from the AI saying, I see your army is massed by my border. What are you doing? Nothing.
01:01:52
Speaker
Don't worry about it. It's purely coincidental. We're just admiring the cold from a distance. That's it. Right. We just want to get a good whiff of it. Maybe it will inspire our scientists to really dig deep into the earth and find some.
01:02:08
Speaker
I did have I did have a game where I decided I was going to be a little more militaristic. And I actually I was playing on the real a real world, real earth map. Only time I think I've ever played that map. And I started in the Indian subcontinent. And let me tell you, the mountains in that place, great natural fortifications. So I I ended up working with I believe it was Gandhi who was north of me. And we just took over that whole continent.
01:02:36
Speaker
Like, I just took the South, he took the North, and then the rest of the entire game, and that was around the time when Uranium showed up, and then the rest of the entire game for me was, keep Uranium out of Gandhi's hands. That was the rest of the game. Well, he used to be happy. That's how stereotypes stay true.
01:03:00
Speaker
Oh. Yeah, and also to talk, I'm sorry, just to go with one other fun story of mine, another probably my favorite games ever. And you kind of alluded to it on accident there, Amy. You were talking about a science victory that suddenly gets derailed because I was playing. So I was going for the science victory. I was building my ship parts to do that thing. And then my nearest neighbor, who
01:03:26
Speaker
I had been friendly with my nearest neighbor for the entire time. I spread, I think I found like a nice little peninsula and just stopped. So I was relatively small, not the smallest empire, but relatively small. And my neighbor had swallowed up a lot of the continent and kind of
01:03:42
Speaker
was probably I think was ahead of me in points was probably was the biggest empire on the planet. I was playing at a high enough difficulty that the the AI actually knew what a science victory was and knew that I was getting close to it. And so suddenly that relationship soured.
01:03:58
Speaker
They managed to turn most of the planet against me and that became a race of, well, then I thought I had a pretty good defense set up with my military until they sabotaged the construction of one of my parts.
01:04:14
Speaker
And so then I needed to start to put resources both into military and into spies. And then finally, they decided, as I was very close, to actually declare war. And that's when my nuclear arsenal got deployed. And it was a very close finish to get that last piece put together before I ran out of weapons and military units. Yeah, wow. How many plates of yours have space ports? All right, bomb all those.
01:04:43
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's interesting. Like, you know, if you get like in Civ V, if you get embargoed or like if your idea, you know, like if you're one particular ideology and everyone chooses something else, you know, it's suddenly, suddenly you go from like having a happy, productive, um,
01:05:04
Speaker
uh, empire to one that is teetering on, you know, unhappiness the whole time. And, and, you know, you're really having to work extremely hard, you know, you're having to focus all your social policies on happiness and then, and do those- Or you're completely broke. Yeah, or you're completely broke. Yeah, yeah, we've got no trade. And then, you know, and then you're like, do I plug this out? Do I start a war to take over someone else to get the,
01:05:28
Speaker
you know, get their world wonders to make me happier or, you know, and I think, you know, back on the resources thing, like, you know, you actually, sometimes you do actually start a war because you're like, well, I need these resources and this is just, this is the way, like, I'm not going to rely on trade for the rest of the game. Like, that's too difficult.
01:05:48
Speaker
I sometimes just sit there and go, oh, that's why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Yeah. Yeah. Look, there are a lot of moments like that where you kind of like, or you kind of like, yeah, you know, I've just sent my archaeologist into like, you know, dig up ruins and then, you know, the locals are getting annoyed with that. Like, oh yeah, right. That would be bad. Or someone does that to you and you're like, well, how dare they steal the ultra marbles? Like, I get this now. Like, it's, I think it's interesting.
01:06:16
Speaker
What's historical events in a sharp contrast? How do you reckon the map that your map choice changes your game? Because I reckon it changes mine quite a lot.
01:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, I know early on I tended to avoid things with oceans because I didn't want to deal with the complication of a navy. Like, I don't want to deal with that. I'm not going to worry about that. So
Economic Strategy in Games and Comparisons
01:06:41
Speaker
I would do like Pangea or like larger continents, things where I could do a lot of game without needing to build ships or more than a couple to just like protect my cities and not worry about anymore.
01:06:54
Speaker
The change to Civ V, or even some of the early games, but in Civ I and Civ II, building roads was this really big thing. You could build roads across your continent and that would make your life a lot easier.
01:07:10
Speaker
Whereas I think in the C5, particularly, it costs you money to have roads. I don't like that in C5. I like the building and exploring and the infrastructure bit. That you can do what you want without cost. Or maybe if you played on the world map.
01:07:34
Speaker
you know putting a city like where Panama would be like so that you could get the ships through like you know those kinds of things you know like are really quite pleasing but like. I like that about Civ 6 because your trade routes create roads as they go. Oh really amazing. Yeah kind of somewhat auto upgrade as long as you still have that trade route going they'll auto upgrade into like periodically into better roads and everything.
01:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of, one of my favorite things about six, which is the least favorite thing. A friend of mine whose five is still his preference. Um, but like, well, like, like five a, I love that five added the grids as opposed to the hexes as opposed to squares.
01:08:19
Speaker
I also really like military units can't stack because stacks of doom and four were always fun until they were used against you. Oh, so that's what that feels like. I can't do anything. Well, and it made between for me, at least between what five and six did. So one of the things that six did that I love.
01:08:43
Speaker
It didn't understand the first time I played. Once I went back to it, I actually fell in love with this. Your cities have districts that are still on the map. So if you want to build most of the things, not all, but most of the things you want to build in your city require the proper district. You want to build a university, you have to build a district for that, and then you can build buildings on that. And so it requires you to use the map.
01:09:08
Speaker
in a way that earlier games didn't, and to really pay attention to the map for some of those things. And that's one of the things that I love to do in both 5 and 6. We talked about how you start. I usually start, get my... We're getting...
01:09:26
Speaker
Oh, so we got a cookie clock in the background. Yeah. Oh, that's what that is. That's fine.
01:09:45
Speaker
Some amount of this. We'll cut out some amount of this. I'll talk to Mike. It's quite, it's crazy. You can see the one second apart. Yeah. It's perfectly plays. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Remember where I was.
01:10:08
Speaker
During the pandemic, we, uh, my house for whatever reason, ended up getting a couple of mice in the house. And, um, we, in our city, you were allowed to have like one person.
01:10:21
Speaker
could be your, what we call the bubble buddy. So like you were in a lockdown, but you know, if you lived alone, you could go and visit somebody else, right? Like for your mental health, right? Amy lives alone. So I was a bubble buddy. We're recording a podcast. We've got mice in the house and midway through the podcast, we hear this, and then, and I just bolt out of the room and well.
01:10:49
Speaker
Awful. I work in pest control, so this is extra amusing to me. I think what happened in Melbourne was that there were anyone who lived parallel to a busy street that normally would have cafes and stuff open. Yes, because all the dumpsters in the back are empty. Yeah, yes, they all had mice and cup stretches. They had to find somewhere to get food.
01:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, Hunter's house. I don't remember what I was talking about.
01:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, I love the district, the district building. Yeah, I do love the district building in six because yeah, it's because they also have like adjacency bonuses. So, you know, putting an industrial zone next to a couple quarries or a copper mine or something gives you extra production for a building your science. So you like your libraries and everything, your campus district next to
01:11:55
Speaker
Mountains gives adjacency bonus same thing with the religion ones and everything so like it is a very interesting way and yeah as you were saying Using the map and like it gives extra Insight and thought to I'm just the resources where you maybe want to build a new city But also what else is around there and you kind of start pre-planning it out of like okay, so this has this this this and
01:12:17
Speaker
And it's actually in the, they're all right next to each other. So if I put it, if I put the city center, not next to it, but one away from it, it will expand to all of those. I'll get one of them. We'll expand to the other two and I can put a production, an industrial zone right there between the city center and all three of those. And that's going to give you like a plus four to five to production as well from that. So you get really good.
01:12:41
Speaker
planning it out and zoning it and like proper zoning really. And like you can build aqueducts and dams and everything. It's really good stuff. And I think that that speaks to just the inherent like what this series really does that I don't ever think I've seen in any other game is really just capture the
01:13:01
Speaker
you know, the human, the human, I guess, I was going to say spirit. That's not the right way, but the human tendency to kind of like want to do those kinds of things and like, you know, plan out stuff. And then, you know, and then the pleasure of actually executing it is, it's like, it's all in the execution, like, you know, and actually, you know, where the only time sieve gets boring is kind of when you, you know, you're about to win.
01:13:29
Speaker
Right. Like, you know, like it's all about, you know, it's the best part of SIV is the early part of the SIV and the mid part of SIV and sort of like the early late game where you're kind of like you're still executing all these plans. And there's still a bit of risk to it. Like you don't know if it's going to come through. Yeah. And that's really exciting. You know, and I think, you know, you're kind of like, am I going to do this? Like, oh, you know, like I've got this idea based on this map. Maybe I can do that.
01:13:57
Speaker
And a lot of times those kinds of plans and everything that you're doing early and mid game and stuff, like they might not come to fruition for, you know, it was funny if you were like, you know, for the first eight to 100 turns or so. Yes, people, that's this is what we're talking about, like how long these games last. Like, yeah, like.
01:14:14
Speaker
days, a whole weekend, depending on what speed you're playing at and everything. But yeah, like, it's something that like, you really kind of like, all right, I'm going to execute this plan. And like, I've just, I've moved everything to the right point where I can now do this. That's still gonna take like another 30, 40 turns, hour, two hours in real time, however long it ends up being. And it's fun, like seeing those things of like,
01:14:39
Speaker
yes, it finally like now it finally completed like the circle is closed and there's a nice cathartic nature to that of like, ah, perfect. It worked out flawlessly. Someone else didn't steal the great library this time. So I was able to actually do all this. And now I got these like three booths, which puts me right into this part that I want to push for and now I can get this out of it and so forth. And yeah, like you were saying, the
01:15:05
Speaker
human nature of like meticulously planting things and seeing you know the planting the seeds and seeing it sprout and come to fruition now it's sudden there's a mighty oak in front of you and you're like i did that hell yeah yeah and it just the there are only other types of games that i can think of that have a similar feel to them in certain respects and they have a similar game flow to them is like
01:15:30
Speaker
the park building games like roller coaster tycoon stuff they also have the same like you know sick devious side to them as well like make it that so they all just crash and die but like um for me i recently last uh almost year now gotten big into um the frontier games uh Jurassic world evolution
01:15:51
Speaker
park building and management simulator games. And there's a similar feel to it. Like you have these stretches of downtime and you can kind of just distract yourself for a minute or two as you're waiting for a couple turns in the context of this game, like waiting for a couple turns for this tech to finish being researched or whatever.
01:16:11
Speaker
And they have these spurts of like, all right, now I got this. I got this. I got the fossils back from this. I'm going to build this dinosaur and I'm putting this enclosure. And yeah, that's going to look really cool.
01:16:24
Speaker
There's a certain ass similar aspect of it. But yeah, you don't get this kind of from many games, you don't, there's not a niche market and a niche genre sub genre really of games of like, resource management games that have this specific kind of feel to it because you have
01:16:44
Speaker
your RTS is like Command & Conquer and Starcraft and everything. And yeah, like this civilization ruined me from being able to do those. You still like at the same time do Civilization 2 and Command & Conquer Red Alert. Like I got more into this and now I can't. I'm like, no, wait, you want me to do stuff now constantly? What is this nonsense? I need time. I need like 10 minutes to think about my turn.
01:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, there's one game and I've been meaning to get back to it. That is it's a real time game. So it's not going to capture quite the same moments of planning and strategizing, but it's still RF. No. Have you ever heard of off world trading company? This is a real time strategy game without combat.
01:17:32
Speaker
Basically, you are one of multiple corporations that is just trying to make the most money, like a corporation would. Extracting resources from, I think it's Mars. And the win condition is you earn enough money that you buy controlling shares of the stock of all of your competing companies.
01:17:54
Speaker
But one of the push-pull aspects of it is until you get 50% of their stock, when you buy stock, it gives them money. So that cash infusion can sometimes push them into a position where they can do something that throws off your plan. That's really cool. I like that a lot.
01:18:14
Speaker
It's a great idea. I feel like one part with the strategy and with people, humans being meticulous and wanting to do things in a particular way, the bit where I get frustrated with Ziv is that the AI's military doesn't do that. It's sometimes quite chaotic. Every now and then you'll get a really satisfying battle.
01:18:35
Speaker
But sometimes you're kind of like, why is it that you've, you know, stopped building units while we're attacking you? Or why is it that you're not kind of fighting back in the way that a person would? You can see that they, you can see if they've got planes or if they've got a nuke or something, but they don't, you know, use it. Why aren't you committing to the battle?
01:18:58
Speaker
Yeah, and that's I think one of my biggest problem. I love the game, but one of the things that is sort of the most problematic for me or is an issue for me is some of the AI stuff feels erratic. In different games, it's a different amount, but like in five in particular, I have a hard time for the most part understanding why they do or don't like me.
01:19:22
Speaker
And there'll be times where we are trading partners and we've been doing stuff. We're not next to each other, so we don't have those tensions. But we're not on the opposite sides of the world, so we can't be antagonistic with no repercussions. But we've had a good relationship. And then three quarters of the way through the game, suddenly they start insulting me. And I'm like, why? What happened?
01:19:46
Speaker
I mean, like sometimes I've clued in, sometimes it's like you pull ahead of them on points, but most of the time I find it a bit like it's not transparent. And I think also like, you know, your reputation, like I wish that there was like some kind of way you can look at like, like from a numbers perspective. So you could kind of like work out like, all right, my reputation is here. If I start taking the cities, this is going to drop my reputation this way. Or if I liberate some cities, that's going to help.
01:20:14
Speaker
those kinds of things. I think that something for was better at and this is the thing one thing that I found fascinating Sid Meier maybe some other folks from from for axis have done like GDC talks for the game developers conference and software they'll talk and there was one in particular where they were talking about like overarching sieve design not about any given game but like how they go about making a new game and
01:20:39
Speaker
I just realized I derailed my own train of thought. But I'll hopefully go back to the first one. But let me finish the second one. So what they kind of do when they model out, they go through all the systems in the game, and they want to take one third, continue them to the next unchanged. Move that up. They want to take one third and try to evolve or change those in some way. Take them as they are, make some change to them, move them forward. And they want to take a third, throw them out, and put something new in.
01:21:05
Speaker
And you can kind of see that. And that's why, for folks who aren't as familiar with all the different games, we're kind of referencing all of these different ones. And while we're mostly talking about five, because I think collectively that might be the one we put the most time into. But all of us are kind of going back and forth with some of these other ones, because as they change these systems, sometimes you'll get, this one's good at this, or this one's good at that. I think it was four. See, I'm bringing it back.
01:21:30
Speaker
Um, that if you, when you're talking to somebody, if you mouse over their portrait, it would actually give you a whole breakdown of the pluses and minuses of like, okay, you did this, you have a good relationship for a long time, but you just took land near them and you're trading with their enemy or something. And so it's like plus four plus three plus, you know, minus one, minus one. So you have a, a five, which is a good relationship or whatever the numbers work out.
01:21:56
Speaker
They brought that back again with six, where it's a similar kind of like, okay, if you do these things, you'll gain favor. If you do these things, you'll lose favor. And you can sort of look at it even with your responses when they say something like, you know how you can say things like, just get over it or whatever. There's points associated with those things in six. And I wonder if that's... Five is not clear.
01:22:24
Speaker
Well, I wonder if that is consequential in five, but they don't tell you. Yeah. I feel like five has more, I don't know if more complexity, but definitely at least six has the same level of complexity in some areas, but six will be a bit more transparent on exactly what is going on. And yeah, like every civilization has, or even city-states have certain things that they will gravitate towards, like in six.
01:22:52
Speaker
germany gets pissed off if you're making friends with city-states don't do that because of you know when they were still the 40 germanic states and everything like they all have a queue to them of like okay so germany is on the map so i gotta not be doing this or
01:23:06
Speaker
So, you know, so-and-so is on the map. I gotta make sure to try to avoid that if I care. If it's new or if they've just made like the mechanics of it transparent. I think it's just that they made the mechanics transparent of being like, this is what this civilization is about. This is what this one's about.
01:23:26
Speaker
Cause in C5, like I think what I've clued into is like, you know, the whole like denouncing people thing and kind of like, what's that
Complexity and Anxiety in Strategy Games
01:23:33
Speaker
about? And, you know, and you kind of get, you know, that all the players, like you can kind of gang up on one thing and so like, and this sort of safety in numbers, like, and so like, you know, if you don't.
01:23:46
Speaker
kind of go with the crowd or if you lead like you sort of managed to like denounce someone and then a whole lot of other people actually were waiting for someone to do it and then everyone kind of piles on like but it's that that's that's kind of tricky to figure out and I think it also speaks back to like the personalities of each civilization like world leader like
01:24:09
Speaker
Because in Civ I, like I think if you read the manual, like it says, oh, you know, you know, the Americans are this and the, you know, the Chinese are this and blah, blah, blah. But actually you can play as whoever and there's no difference. It's just the colors different. Right. And the graphics are different, but there's no, there's no.
01:24:28
Speaker
But in Civ V and Civ VI, there's a whole lot of stuff that's quite different. And also gets back to not only just the units, but also the bonuses, but also the way in which... I always find Poland is really aggressive and challenging to play against. I find England just never wants to trade with you. And Russia's just flirting with everyone.
01:24:54
Speaker
You guys noticed this as well, because Hunter didn't pick it up for ages. And then I sent him a series of screenshots when I was playing the different moves that Catherine the Great just floats with so many of the leaders when she first meets them. I think because you were playing as Japan. Oh, she really likes Japan. And it's always like, you know, it's a pleasure to meet such a handsome and, you know, striking stranger or something. What are you doing, Catherine?
01:25:20
Speaker
Oh, they definitely lean into certain historical studios for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. You kind of want it to be a point of like maybe in a future game, like, all right, well, let's see if we can actually explore it then. Like, seriously, like options of like now where I'm literally and figuratively in bed with so much.
01:25:45
Speaker
Yeah, what happens if I flip back with Catherine? Is there a way to like we merge our civilizations through marriage or something? That'd be an interesting way to like go about a future one. I think it's called the Caesar and Cleopatra expansion.
01:26:01
Speaker
right yeah well yes i think that's getting into um i haven't played it much i still want to but the game is there's so much going on it's so opaque to me but like the crusader king series has a lot of that going on um i i think from what i've seen the third one has a lot more things to help you understand the systems but there are so many systems on that game to understand what's going on but the the basic premise it well it has a
01:26:27
Speaker
at least on the surface of a vaguely similar premise where you are you know a lord of some you pick some character you're playing the lord of some territory and you have your vassals and you have the knights you have all this stuff but there is that one is more of a you have one character who is your character but then at some point they're going to age and die and then they need an heir and so you can get
01:26:50
Speaker
and heir through marriage, through adoption, through there's all sorts of things. And for a long time, Crusader Kings III was up there with Eve online as the game that I'd never wanted to play, but I always enjoyed reading about because there was just these amazing stories that would come out. Like apparently somehow you can start like witches' covens in Crusader. Like I don't understand how and I don't know enough about the game to get it. But that was apparently a thing that people just found after the fact, after the game came out.
01:27:28
Speaker
This is dangerously more fascinating than real life. Yeah. And that's where it's like, as much as I, like, I love the Civilization series. And that's part of why, honestly, it's part of why I love it. There's a lot of complexity in depth compared to a lot of other games, you know, particularly in other genres, but then when you kind of get into, but it's also less complex in depth than some of these other, uh,
01:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's certain aspects of games like that.
01:27:53
Speaker
games in this in this same genre that have so many systems it is so hard at least for me to sit down and feel like I can play them and I mean it's part of the point and this some of it comes down to my own my own personality where I don't necessarily want to sit down and do the best thing but I don't want to sit down and knowingly make poor choices because I don't understand them
01:28:15
Speaker
And I have I struggle with that. And I think part of the point of some of those games is you're going to play a game and you're going to lose it fairly early or you're going to run into something fairly early because you're going to learn those systems and you're going to play it more and more and get better and better at them. And I just struggle at that in the beginning so much. I feel like for you, it's an issue of lacking initial informed consent in a certain way. You know what I mean?
01:28:39
Speaker
as silly as the phrasing might be, right? It's you're making choices, like you said, not knowing how the systems work so you don't understand the consequences of them until they're bearing down on you and now you have a game over screen, right?
01:28:56
Speaker
I mean, it ties into my real anxiety, probably, too. I have social anxiety. That's the thing I talk about on the podcast a lot. That's part of why we're a big mental health podcast, which I realize at the top, I didn't mention, too. My co-host is a practicing psychologist. This is a big thing that we do. But for me, that isn't fun.
01:29:17
Speaker
Because I feel anxious as I'm making every decision because my brain is starting to go down all of the different avenues of, is this the wrong thing? What consequences are going to happen? There's a lot of learning that can be done in failure, and I can definitely do that, but in situations where I
01:29:36
Speaker
No, I can't make the right choice because I don't understand what's going on. I have such a hard time engaging with it. Interesting. I view that control on this continuum, being in control, being out of control. What's interesting is that
01:29:54
Speaker
for some people and in some circumstances, like being out of control can either be terrifying or it can be completely relieving, you know, so like you can be like, well, like, so if I think about like, for some people, two people can sit on a plane and one person's like, I'm not in control, like, and just freaking out about the fact that, you know, they've got no control about what happens with the plane.
01:30:20
Speaker
Whereas like for me, I'm like, well, I'm not responsible. There's literally nothing I can do here. And so I'm calm, right? And that kind of gets back into that personality kind of stuff. Yeah. And it is interesting how games can trigger different kinds of emotions. I mean, we've kind of talked a little bit about that kind of, you know, and I was making joke about it, but like,
01:30:43
Speaker
You know like all those that that civilizations doing that stuff how dare they need kind of you get this kind of like you know four hours worth of like I was really working at that now I'm really angry and I'm gonna have to do something about that but you know I think it's interesting how a game can trigger like anxiety around like what am I doing and like you know and then and kind of
01:31:04
Speaker
You know, that all that, like for me, I think it's the triggers my perfectionism, like we're talking about in the, was it the great works page, you know, so where you can sort all the, you know, where you're putting the artifacts and the great works to get the maximum amount of culture and tourism.
01:31:24
Speaker
And how, like that's actually, it can be really hard to do that and it takes so much kind of cognitive effort. But like when I, like I'll either, I won't be paying attention to it all or I'll be obsessively focused on trying to get, you know, just a couple of extra points here and there. That's this game in general, like either you're barely paying attention or you're obsessing over every bit. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally.
01:31:53
Speaker
Is there anything else? We talked a little bit about glitches. I think one of the things that bugs me is, um, God, I'm always talking about nuclear war. It's your favorite. When you nuke someone and it doesn't, and like you don't get the explosion, that is an annoying glitch. But there's also another glitch of, um,
01:32:20
Speaker
Like if you take a city over, but then, and then it like, and then you like kind of, you do something to it and then it won't let you save because you haven't like updated like a production thing. And then you can like lose turns. It's very, very frustrating. There's a name for it anyway. It's very irritating.
01:32:42
Speaker
I can't try to save a game in the middle of a turn. I have to see next turn in the corner there. I know you sometimes play without it on, but. Yeah.
01:32:52
Speaker
I need to see that because it's a nice signifer of like, and you're done. Yep. Yep. You're steady. Um, was it weird? Was I written down here? Why can't I be rude to the AI? Like they are to me. Like they really, sometimes they're like, Oh, you know, your, your civilization is, you know, puny and you're like, I can't, I can't do that to them. It's irritating. It is. It's my witty repartee. Yeah.
Cultural Representation and Evolution in Civilization
01:33:21
Speaker
Even if it wasn't like a free text box, but you could click some options. Yeah, click some options. That'd be all right. Send some insights out there. Make it like a Bioware game where you have like six options and you're like neutral, maximum, sass, really free cordial, you know. And then if you haven't used enough nuclear weapons, you don't get the extra aggressive one. You still get the right option, right? Yeah.
01:33:48
Speaker
I mean, one of the things that we did know Dan was like, you know, does like, and we've kind of been alluding to it the whole time, but like, I do wonder about this game in like, what traits it does bring out in people, like, because it really like, if you're thinking about sort of racism and, and,
01:34:06
Speaker
Things like that, like I reckon it can definitely play on those stereotypes and it can definitely kind of like, I mean, I don't think anyone's ever done a psychological study on it, but I'd be fascinated to, I don't know, what do you guys think about that? I think everybody's equally killable.
01:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know about bringing out things in players specifically, but one thing I did want to talk about, and I did a little more research on this, and I found an actual term, unilateral evolution, which is something, basically it's a theory of sociology that's obsoleted in all this.
01:34:45
Speaker
It was basically essentially racist and all these other ists idea that civilization basically moves in one direction. There's one way for things to happen. And it just so happens to model after the European influenced civilizations and everyone else is just a certain amount behind us. How convenient.
01:35:07
Speaker
just the way, especially because in video games there's a lot of things where, and actually we talk about this a lot on our podcast when we talk about the story, lots of times entertainment things need to fit the thing they're trying to do into the structures of the entertainment medium. And for video games,
01:35:26
Speaker
That's progression. There's a progression systems. And so those progression systems fit that sort of evolution theory really well. It's a little problematic that that's in there. And I know one that I caught specifically was when I did very cursory research beforehand, it looks like games two, three and four had this for some reason. One didn't. They dropped it by five. But in the tech tree, there were
01:35:52
Speaker
like religions, that you would research mysticism as a technology, then polytheism, and then that would unlock monotheism.
01:36:01
Speaker
Like religions advance one to the next. It's a whole thing and it's bad. I think there's, you know, five and six, there's definitely civilization is moving, the games are moving away from that a little bit. And six, for instance, your culture, they take a lot of the things that science does and they kind of break culture into its own track like science. So you have two sort of different ways to advance certain things.
01:36:29
Speaker
And that helps and also the way that you navigate through isn't necessarily one specific path though you have to unlock this to get to that you know can still lead to some of this and so I don't know.
01:36:44
Speaker
Hopefully, this is something they continue to try to find new ways. Maybe, as they say, if they're aiming to reinvent a third of the game every time they do a new game, maybe they look at the science. Because really, other than pulling some things out for the culture stuff on sixth, science works the same way it always has, one through six.
01:37:03
Speaker
You earn science, it gives you technology. Certain ones unlock different ones in a tree that goes along the thing. Maybe they find some better ways to represent this that aren't sort of evoking this very colonial type of sociology.
01:37:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And imagine it, like, imagine that it's not always easy, like, to, to, you know, if you're a developer and you're doing stuff, because you, you know what you know, like, and then, and then to sort of then kind of come back and kind of go, Oh, hang on that, you know, the, the,
01:37:36
Speaker
You were talking about the mysticism and the polytheism and stuff like that. Looking at history, that might sort of seem like a logical way to do it, but then if you actually dig deeper into history, you go, oh, hang on. There's a whole lot of implicit bias there or whatever term. Or even the characteristics of the leaders and stuff like that. Like if you're wanting to simplify it down to a couple of things, you end up with a stereotypical picture. Yeah. And with Catherine floating with everyone. Yeah, exactly.
01:38:06
Speaker
Yeah, you know, but yeah, exactly as you said, you know, there is, yeah, you look at things and especially from the early games, right? You're creating a whole new game, you don't you're, you're building from nothing from the game. So yeah, going on like a quote unquote, more macro sense historical representation of certain things. Yeah, going from mysticism to pod theism to monotheism.
01:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, there's a there's a logic behind that. But obviously, yes, as we said, once you kind of explore things and have a foundation, now you're expanding on it, you can go back and look at that and go like, oh, yeah, that's kind of a bit problematic. So let's kind of reexamine that. And yeah, as you're saying, the
01:38:56
Speaker
different from six of having the tech tree and then the culture tree and having two separate things that you're researching and having your science and culture measuring how quickly and how much you're actually pumping into both and into the trees and everything. Really good stuff. And yeah, it does make things a lot less problematic in that nature, but also further expands and adds complexity and layers onto the actual gameplay itself.
01:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, and we'll see what future games do, and I hope that they find some good ways to continue to evolve the game and continue to find ways to both rework things that are problematic. But like you say, that helps on that aspect, but it also creates a new push and pull, a new tension within the systems of the game. And so you're making a better game while also making a game that is better.
Games as Tools for Critical Thinking
01:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's like less prejudice. Meanwhile, my armies march across the world, you know, like, you still gotta still have player agency.
01:40:06
Speaker
That's it. Up to you if you want to be a shit-heel or not. That's it. Sometimes you just got to send submarines in and just take down ships. Sometimes you, as a former 40k player, you detect heresy and it has to be purged. You're speaking to me.
01:40:31
Speaker
Oh, we can go on. I mean, it's one of the final thoughts I had was it's been interesting. I've got a son who's 10 and it's been, it was interesting to sort of teach him, you know, get him to play it a little bit and just, just sort of the excitement of, of, um, watching, watching this young person sort of explore this world and kind of seeing how they could build stuff, but also like,
01:40:59
Speaker
It's not really an educational game, but it does actually teach you some stuff. If you're interested, depending on your environment, it can be actually teaching you some new things about the world. It's opened up questions for him.
01:41:16
Speaker
Yeah. And if you're a curious person, I think that, you know, that then leads to kind of like reading about stuff or, you know, and the civopedia, you know, the help section is actually extraordinarily detailed around stuff, which, you know, which I think is a
01:41:32
Speaker
you know, not necessarily a strength that's recognized of the game. I mean, also, the game is beautiful. Like, it's such a beautifully rendered game. Like, the graphics in a Civ 4 was such a beautiful step up. And then Civ 5, I think, is just sort of expand on that. The screenshots I've seen of Civ 6 make it look a little bit cartoony, but I'm not sure. It's definitely less realistic and more exaggerated features in certain realms and everything, but it still is
01:42:02
Speaker
rendered and done beautifully, obviously with a different aesthetic filter on it.
01:42:11
Speaker
And if nothing else... Also, having Sean Bean talk to you about every tech and culture thing that you unlock, I mean, you know, you can't go wrong with that. Oh, really, to Sean Bean, because I think, is it Liam Neeson in one of them? I feel like it was... Maybe I'm just imagining it is. There's mistaken people who sound European or British or Scottish or whatever, who died in the day.
01:42:38
Speaker
Yeah, see, I have played the game with no volume because I play it while I watch shows. So I have not heard these in a lot of time. Right. Yeah. I mean, I always have my headphones in plugged into my computer constantly. But yeah, playing a game like that, they're sitting on the desk to decide. So I also get a little bit of it out of the quarter by ear and everything. But no, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the same quotes, obviously, for every single thing. And some of them are pretty funny.
01:43:06
Speaker
Yeah, my kids are always, like, quoting. I think it's the sunshine where they're always like, no hunger. You don't know what you're saying, do you? No, I've got no idea what I just said, but the greetings. I have to apologize to somebody out there. Don't send me emails.
01:43:25
Speaker
I do think that like the sound has given away quite a few times when we've been having conversations about the podcast, particularly before I started playing. And you'd have the sound on the background, we'll be having a phone call and I'd just hear a sort of a sheep.
01:43:47
Speaker
It'd be interesting. On the education standpoint, it kind of reminds me, you kid, if you stick with it, might pick up, if nothing else, a lot of random trivia knowledge. Because myself, I played magic. I played magic since early on. And one of the central features of magic is your lands. That's kind of how you get your energy to cast your spells to do different things. And so early on, and it's since kind of changed for game design reasons, but early on,
01:44:14
Speaker
a lot of the different lands they used, a lot of the special ones were actual geographic features like plateaus and bayous. And so I was like eight and like living in the flattest part of the United States. But I knew what a plateau was. I knew what the bad lands were. I knew bayou and I got all these random things because those were all in magic. So I learned what they were.
01:44:38
Speaker
Yeah, and at the very least, whether or not necessarily like educational from an academic standpoint, a game like this...
01:44:47
Speaker
to someone who enjoys playing this stuff, obviously expands critical thinking. It expands, you know, short-term and long-term planning, as we've been saying constantly throughout this. Like it's something that at the very least, while even if someone doesn't get any academic educational value out of it, it continues to sharpen the mind and keep you kind of fresh and keep, as I always like to say, keep your blade sharp.
Podcast Wrap-up and Listener Invitation
01:45:13
Speaker
You know, you gotta have a mental whetstone.
01:45:16
Speaker
And even down to working out the pattern of AI and working out its flaws and learning how to use that to your advantage. Yeah, absolutely. I love this game. It's amazing.
01:45:36
Speaker
Well do you all want to give one last plug for your stuff and maybe we end it here? Sounds good. I was told we only do the shameless plugs in the beginning. We can shameless plug anytime you want. Oh well you should have told me that I would have finished every thought with. By the way you can find more of me at
01:45:58
Speaker
I won't leave it to Amy. I always do the whole talking. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So, well, if you want to hear more from us, you can listen to Two Shrinks Pod everywhere you get your podcasts, or you can find us on our website, twoshrinkspod.com.
01:46:15
Speaker
We've got lots, like we've done about 80, 81 episodes. There's likely something, you know, there is, we did a how to help with social anxiety or, you know, but we've also done just lots of stuff. So if you're interested in psychology, tune on in. And when you just want to listen to something casual and not have to think too hard about it.
01:46:42
Speaker
You can listen to me, my co-hosts, Amanda, Eric, and Tierra at the Leftover Army Monsters Giant Podcast All Out of Attack. We're part of the larger Leftover Army Podcast Feed. There's a couple other ones on here. We tend to be the most consistent one on there. Yeah. Giant Monsters. I mean, why not? Sometimes they punch robots. Sometimes they punch each other. What's to not love? Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. That was great. Absolutely.
01:47:13
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find both of the hosts on Twitter. Hobbs can be found at Hobbs Q and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to goblin lore pod on Twitter or email us at goblin lore podcast at gmail.com.
01:47:34
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobslugs to our link tree on our Twitter account and listed in our show notes. This has everything from our discounts for the grinding coffee company to our Patreon.
01:47:47
Speaker
The music for today's show was by Vindergotten, who can be found at Vindergotten at badcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at Steve Raffel on Twitter. Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing 4thos content. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmpg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.