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Comment by kinghajj | Hacker News Reader

Nobody else has mentioned this, but something Civ has taught me is how to appreciate realpolitik. Nothing makes it more clear than when you catch yourself having thoughts like:

- "Washington spawned too close for comfort; they're a threat to my peoples' long term security. Annihilate them first."

- "Hmm, the Mayans have some strategically valuable territory..."

- "Hey, the Persians are way back in the Renaissance, while I'm in the modern era, and they have luxuries I need. Let's send a few battleships over there."

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If you're interested in realpolitik in games, I'd like to recommend the excellent Crusader Kings II game and its DLC. You play as a feudal ruler, and find your character plotting murders, marrying off daughters, and conspiring for claims to titles.

Ditto. I have sunk 1k hours into CK2.

My views about the Princes in the Tower[0] changed drastically after playing this game. Pretenders to the throne are a danger to the realm, even the very little ones.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_in_the_Tower

Then you'll end up trading those normal realpolitik thoughts for "I'll marry my heir off to my sister because she's a genius", "I'll just have these 5 children assassinated for their father's land". Choose your own poison.

Ideally you choose their poison, not your own.

Unless you want to commit suicide to be able to bring your strong, genius heir to power.

Gotta get the Depressed trait first for that.

Why doesn't anyone like Victoria 2? For me it's miles and miles more engaging than CK2 or EU4

I love Victoria 2, but it does feel a little more on rails than either CK2 or EU4. There tends to be a lot less really interesting ahistorical results than in the other two - invariably you end up with the USA, UK, Germany, France, Russia, and Japan, or possibly China if it managed to industrialize, as the superpowers.

> You play as a feudal ruler

More specifically, that means that you have other rulers under you who may be providing the bulk of your armies... rulers who may have designs on your throne, and their own allies. And even if they're theoretically loyal to you, your son may be at risk of being stabbed by a brother-in-law with designs on your kingdom - leaving your daughter in a very delicate situation only a few steps away from Game Over. Perhaps that will mean it's time to replace your wife and try for a new heir (good luck with the papal divorce politics, better have some poison ready in case that doesn't work).

It is remarkable how the win-or-lose outcome of the game changes the player's mindset. In the normal course of real events, I probably would never kill billions of people, but if I have 60% of the world population and I need 64% to win the game, it actually makes perfect sense to just nuke everybody, to bring down the denominator.

Better hope that if / when general intelligence AI arrives that there are isn't anything which optimizes for "bringing down the denominator" of the human population.

I'm confident that there will be plenty of AIs built which would like to optimize for that. (Why you would imagine them to be attached to systems capable of doing anything about it is another matter, though...)

You should totally try Europa Universalis IV for some realPolitik. "The Spanish empire's colonies are profiting from my policing in the caribbean sea, let's make a trade embargo to make them pay."

CKII is really good as well, both are different dishes. I've dumped at least 500 h on each.

And you can buy a converter DLC that takes a CKII save file that's reached the end of the timeline and convert it to a EU IV save file at the beginning of the timeline.

Civilization taught me (or tried to teach me) that there is no corruption whatsoever in Democracy... Stalin and Mao were the greatest leaders of their respective civilizations... United Nations is one of the world wonders... creating United Nations requires Communism... : )

I would love to see some of the realpolitik games mentioned here get tablet/mobile versions that keep the complexity that makes those games fun. Sadly, there's not much available if you want to go down that path (the 2012 XCOM and Civ Rev 2 are about it).

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