Intervening in the Market System

Heilbroner pointed out that the New Deal, which was established during the 1930's, marked the beginning in which the government would intervene in the affairs of the economy in an attempt to make the market system work.

While playing CIV4, there really was never a point that parked the beginning in which a government could trully step into the economy and try to manage it. For through out the game, you, as the government, were intervening in the affairs of the economy by controlling trade routes, investing money in research and development for greater economic growth.

So, that's one interesting aspect that the game could improve upon. It should enforce key events through out the game, like World Wars, Civil Wars, Great Depressions, silent depression (inflation draught), etc. And with these key events, have the player make drastic decisions to turn things around and look at the economy from the different perspective. In order words, with every key event, the gameplay would change to suit the outcomes of such events. For example, if a Great Depression was to accure, then this would be because the market system was let to run free as it is, thus due to this key event, the gameplay would change in which the player would assume greater control of the market system inorder to make the market system work. For the player plays the role of the ruler, the king, the government, and thus should assume those role accurately to its times.

Giong to War

My neighbor has been annoying the hell out of me, so I figured I would take over some his land to expand my territory. This was during the industrial era in the mid 1900's. Unfortunately, during the development of my civilization I spent majority of my recources improving the well being of my civilization and very little for military advancement. In other words, I was not prepared for this war.

The outcome, well, was not so good. I was pretty much annihaleted. My enemy did offer a peace porposal between us, which I admitingly refused to see how far things would go and if I could regain any ground. The war has been going on for 20 years, in which it ended in 1960 with my last city falling into ruin.

What took me centuries to build was destroyed in a matter of 2 decades.

The Speed of Industrialization

When you start the game from the beginning, things begin to move rather slowly, but as you progress and expand you civilization and things start to speed up. By the time I hit the industrialization era, my civilization was huge. Things have gotten so fast and complex that there was always something to do, something to build, something research, something to trade.

Looking at this, I have to ask myself: why did my civilization pick such great momentum? I think Heilbroner, answers this question best by presenting the impact industrial technology can have on the economy. He points out that entrepreneurs move the economy ever forward with greater inventions, development methods, and competition. With great food surpluses, urbanizations were formed with huge cities consisting of massive population. And Mass Production started the growth of large scale production. And of course, lets not forget the ever growing technological advancements. These are the aspects that pushes a civilization in an upwards momentum, further growing and becomming ever more complex. That's what happened to my Civilization.

What to Produce

According to Colander, one of the central problems of Economics is "what to produce." My decisions in the game on what to produce has caused my Civilizations to be far behind others in terms of growth and technology. I relized that at some given time, producing one thing may take much longer then producing it later on. It seems as I continue to research and gain new technologies, things become much faster and easier to produce. I only wish I knew this from the beginning.

During early days of my civilization I made some bad decisions on what to produce. I completely ignored the amount of turns it takes to produce something and just picked what ever interested me. Due to this, I wasted a lot of turns producing things that would take forever to build and thus my civilization began lagging behind all the other ones. For example, one of the first things I produced was some a Gallion which to up 40 turns. Ouch! With those turns I could produced settlers for expansion or warriors for conquest. Darn.

Well I learned my lesson. Deciding what to produce can be an extremely important factor to the growth of your civilization. I will keep playing and see if I can catch up with other civilzation. I planning to take over some land cause I have very little. I wonder what effect that may have on the growth of my economy?

A growing society

I just started a new game and I decided to start off with a Greek civilization. As I began expanding and growing my civilization I noticed that a number of transitions accrued in my civilization. My civilization transition from a band society to tribe society, and then to a chiefdom society.

As you start the game, you begin with a band society, in which the your society is free to wander instead of being settled. But once your society is settled, which happens mighty quickly, you society automatically transitions to a tribe society.

After many turns, I have expanded my civilization, developed new technologies, and established a political rule over my empire. This told me that my society has finally transitioned to chiefdom society.

Now Diamond argues that the main reason for these transitions in societies is because of a growing population and he makes some valid point regarding his claim. However, this game rather ignores the aspect of accurately displaying the population of your civilization. Because even though I felt that my civilization has finally transitioned to a chiefdom society, my population was only the size of a band society.

Of course this game is not perfect, and it was made to entertain people and not to provide a realistic simulation of economical context. But it's interesting to see how the game fails sometimes in capturing some of most crucial points of economics, like population. Nevertheless, I was able to recognize that my society has transitioned by other means instead of the size of my population. For cultural, political, and religious aspects of a society can be analyzed to see if a given civilization has transitioned to next stage.

The Need for Expantion

For my first play through, my desire was not to go in depth into interacting with other civilizations around me but to explore the basics of growing a civilization without having to deal with the given world around me. Thus the reason I chose Japan as my starting point for it is very much isolated from the rest of the world.

I was happy where I was and I planned to stay idle for I had no "need" in exploring and interacting with the world around me for this first play through. However, as my civilization kept growing, I found myself exploring the depths of the world and thus even interacting with other civilizations I come across. But why is that so? If I had no need for such things in the first place, why did I find it to be such an important aspect to my own civilization later on in the game?

The answers to this question can be found in the statement, "invention is often the mother of necessity, rather than vice versa" (Diamond, pg. 243). Diamond argues that technology for the most part tends to be most useful after it has been invented in which people become so used to the inventions that they end up not knowing how they ever did without them. Like for example, with the inventions of cars, there is a way in which it can be used. As time passes, the use of cars becomes a necessity and if all cars where to disappear there would be chaos for a lot of things today depend on the transportation of cars.

Thus as I was playing my game, I came across numerous inventions. One of those was a transportation ship. With this ship I found a way to use it by exploring the world around me and carring settlers to other lands beyond the horizon. Thus with these uses, I found myself expanding my empire in which it ends up falling into conflict with other civilizations. No longer was I growing a civilization on an isolated island. I was expanding, dominating, and reach out to other civilization in the desperate need for trade of greater goods, the need for me land, and the my curiosity of the world around me. All this thanks to the invention of that transportation ship.

Therefore, the very statement "invention is often the mother of necessity", as Diamond puts it, stays true for my first play through of Civilization IV. Despite the fact that I found no need to explore and interact with the world around me, that "need" quickly aroused out of me after the invention of transportation ships for I was curious of what kind of use I could put this new invention in, and thus the need to use it aroused.