“Your Trade Route has Been Plundered”: Using Model Evaluation Techniques to Appraise the Strategy Game Sid Meier’s Civilization as a Model for World Economics
Kurt Hunziker
What is the purpose of a scientific model? Is it to build an audience’s understanding? Is it to simulate real-world concepts or interactions? Much of academia creates models so that they may better understand the world around them by looking at an environment or narrative that they have an element of control over. Fields in the social sciences have begun to look at fictional texts as potential models or narratives in their study. Historians, specifically, have started considering historical video games as historical models or narratives, and strategy games in particular offer a fresh opportunity for model analysis. Scholars like Adam Chapman, Christopher Douglas, Trevor Owens, and a handful of others have explored and analyzed the historical strategy game Sid Meier’s Civilization for this very purpose, as the game offers a wide-lens portrayal of human history and complexity in doing so.
When a player enters a game of Civilization, they must decide which nation to play as. Each nation has different qualities, possible things to produce with their economy, and one of their most historically prolific leaders. If you pick Cleopatra of Egypt, for example, international trade routes grant an extra 4 Gold. Trade routes sent to your country from other countries provide an extra 2 food for the other country and an extra 2 gold for you. Your goal is to progress throughout the eras of history and excel above the other nations in your game in some aspect whether it be in culture, science, diplomacy, or through military force. As you take your turn, you are expected to try to maintain the growth of your cities, the technology you research, the production of your economy, and the happiness of your people, as well as many other minor factors.
Within video game studies, especially when it comes to strategy games, there is a lot of scholarship evaluating the use of strategy games as models for real world concepts and whether games can further develop the audience’s understanding of these topics. When it comes to historical games, like Civilization, many of the video game scholars analyzing them as potential models are historians and historiographers due to its obvious nature as a history text, beginning with Adam Chapman’s “Is Sid Meier’s Civilization History?” (2013) where he lays the foundation for Civilization’s utility and shortcomings as a historical model or narrative. However, in the current scholarship, Civilization’s use as an economic model is yet to be considered.
This evaluation of Civilization as a historical model begins with Chapman’s “Is Sid Meier’s Civilization History?” After his work, the conversation about the game as a historical model evolved into what inaccuracies or biases exist in the historical narrative being presented to players such as the Eurocentricity in its depiction of imperialism and indigenous populations (Douglas, 2002). This then sparked an analysis of how certain members of the audience amend the historical model, similar to other academic models, through game modding and community discussions (Owens, 2010).
While not ample, there is some scholarship that discusses how economic concepts may be presented in video games. Economics scholars have noted the subtle existence of concepts like scarcity and how they influence player decision-making in a sort of cost-benefit analysis (Toh, 2021). The work published leaves much to be explored when it comes to economics in video games and since video games are emerging as a fluid, complex new type of text, their use in contributing to human knowledge has become a popular topic.
In this article, I aim to examine the video game Civilization’s potential as an economic model and its impression on its audience as such. To do this, I will explore how scholars have evaluated Civilization as a model in the past, then investigate how specific game mechanics reflect current ideas in modern world macroeconomics, examine how player/computer interaction supplements its use as a model, and provide my own analysis of what economic variables the game’s model omits and how this may impact the model’s potential utility.
I hypothesize that while it has limits in specificity and the number of variables it considers, Civilization can be used as an economic model to display macroeconomic trends throughout world history and that video games as a medium for economic model display offer unique benefits such as audience interaction and accessible community modification. I conclude that this argument validates strategy video games as a medium for which economic models can be displayed in a field where video games have not been explored as a distinct possibility. This is also a contribution to a relatively infant sector of video game studies as it diverges from historical analysis in favor of a more economics-centered analysis.
Methodology
To develop my argument about the game’s value as a model, I will first examine the theoretical foundations in game studies and economics for model evaluation. I will synthesize ideas from game studies scholars about social sciences being applied to games and games being evaluated as models. Most of these scholars have directly evaluated Civilization in some respect. I will then follow their framework for looking at Civilization and using an economic lens, consider the ideas they suggest. In conjunction with game studies scholars, economists and economics philosophers will assist in defining the goals, criteria, and properties of economic models. Next, I will relate game mechanics to world macroeconomic concepts to exemplify how it constitutes a model in this field. The following section will be centered on the idea of player agency in Civilization. This section will include an application of studies on player decision-making in video games and an analysis of player interaction with Civilization through modding as it relates to modelling. Thereafter, I will apply the definition of an economic model and some commentary about economic models from scholars to Civilization¸ examining its structure and the input variables it takes and processes for determining economic growth. Following this series of analyses, I will provide a conclusion about this evaluation and how the audience (whether it be economists or the general public) can use this model, leaving options for how this evaluation may be continued with greater depth and rigor.
Theoretical Foundation
The types of theory that this article is about are the intersection of game studies and historiography, and a philosophical approach to the study of economics. First, the academic conversation about Civilization has been ongoing since historians first suggested potential analysis and use of the game as a historical narrative or tool of understanding. In Chapman’s work, he evaluates Civilization as a historical model for a wide consumer audience rather than an audience of history scholars. As such, he discusses how it can create understanding where there is little by offering an experiential narrative in which players can learn history by experiencing and experimenting with it as they please (Chapman, 2013). This aspect of a video game as a model is unique and is not a property of alternative mediums for modelling, such as books or documentaries. Chapman creates his own criteria for what constitutes a valuable model: A model/narrative should be “constructive and referential” (Chapman, 2013). First, a model must be referential because it must contain references and information that at least loosely allude to realities in the real world. Second, a model should be constructive in that it contributes supplemental ideas to the scholarly consensus. In this case, Chapman is saying that the model builds on the audience’s understanding of history. Chapman argues that Civilization satisfies these criteria because the aesthetic and underlying algorithms of the game represent intentional choices made by the model’s author to push certain ideas and illustrate history in a certain manner. Chapman’s final foundational belief about Civilization is that video games like Civilization produce audience discourse about the game. Specifically, Chapman discusses the potential for modders to revise the model in question, making it not only more accurate, but suggesting that it can be viewed as a model open to adaptation and change, a property considered by many social science scholars to be important in a model’s overall use.
Other applications of historiography theory to Civilization differ from Chapman in that they examine specific aspects of Civilization’s historical narrative, and many offer highly critical analyses. For example, Christopher Douglas, in “‘You Have Unleashed a Horde of Barbarians!’: Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines,” notes a distinct western historical perspective being pushed in Civilization. He argues that because of the goals the game gives to the player such as world domination, civilization growth, and overall supremacy, the game pushes an imperialist narrative of expansionism. This is the idea that in order for a nation to succeed, it must expand and dominate its surroundings, much like many western empires have in world history. Ultimately, however, the game is a means for entertainment and competition more than it is a portrayal of a distinct perspective on world history. For example, the United States, which is a historically expansionist nation via concepts like Manifest Destiny, gives a bonus where all land military units +1 sight so they can see one more tile than other units. This is not inherently suggestive of expansion as mere exploration does not constitute imperialism. However, the minutia of Civilization’s properties as a historical model is largely unimportant. What is important is that the simplicity of certain design aspects meant for a wide audience means that video games as a model for social sciences are limited in their ability to portray a complex scholarly narrative.
The third, and possibly most critical component of the theoretical foundation for Civilization as a model is how economic academia treats the concept of models and how the economic lens around video games is to be built. First, I will use Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics Dimitri Zenghelis’ definition of an economic model (2014). He states that an economic model is “a simplified framework for describing the workings of the economy” by teasing out relationships surrounding assumptions about an economy (2014). Using this definition, we can concretely evaluate Civilization as an economic model. Additionally, much of my analysis of Civilization through an economic lens will be based on Zenghelis’ idea that the quality of an economic model and its ability to give useful output is in the quality of its inputs chosen. In other words, the economic variables that a model considers must have real, valid relationships with the resulting output variable you are trying to analyze in order to draw conclusions. As such, I will examine the variables that Civilization considers for economic growth. Additionally, I will apply the theory proposed by Weimin Toh (2021) that decision-making in most video games, even in non-strategy video games, is inherently a series of interconnected economic rationalizations in which the player tries to achieve a favorable outcome, just like how economists seek to forecast through modelling, by considering variables like the scarcity and use of resources. Since in Civilization this favorable outcome is centered around economics, like the accumulation of gold, resources, and industrial capability, Civilization is very clearly an interactive economic model that exhibits economic-based decision-making.
Through the application of conclusions made by previous scholarly works, we can continue in this evaluation of Civilization with the assumption that Civilization is an economic model. However, this assumption is not meaningful unless we can determine that Civilization is a useful economic model with unique strengths and an ability to develop understanding of economic development.
Previous Model Evaluation Frameworks for Civilization
The critical analysis of Civilization as a historical model or narrative and not just a form of entertainment media really began with the work of Christopher Douglas, who examined an earlier form of the game and focused on the biases and potential gaps in the historical model. In his mind, what makes Civilization such a potent model is unlike other mediums, games can “incorporate the player, making [them] into actors within the ideological staging” (Douglas 22). This means that in essence, the model can give the players agency to affect variables within the game. Additionally, the rules set by the game developer can be viewed as model parameters which, whether intentionally or not, are selected in a way that weights the probability of certain model outcomes higher than others.
This brings Douglas to his first critique, which is that the game mechanic of barbarians is inherently imperialistic. In Civilization, barbarians are a randomly appearing people who appear in an encampment with a tribal or indigenous design style. Barbarians are always hostile to civilizations and will attack at-will. They can be defeated and their encampments cleared. Douglas suggests that this is problematic because “the game reinforces the sense that those who have been displaced were only ever natural obstacles erupting randomly from the wilderness to block civilization’s advance” (2002). This criticism itself is not useful to the purposes of this paper, but it suggests that there may be flaws in the model design of Civilization and that like every model, there can be biases embedded by the designer that heavily suggest certain outcomes. This is something to be wary of when using Civilization as not just a historical model, but a model for other social sciences, like economics.
The most apparent potential bias within the game as an economic model is in its focus on the maximization of growth at all costs, a very capitalistic mindset, and how this can fail to consider certain other macroeconomic parameters that could be seen as valuable for context when trying to make conclusions. This capitalistic mindset can be seen in the game’s nature as a competitive game but also because the only valuable aspects of the game economy are the overall wealth of your civilization, represented by your “gold,” and your overall production capacity, represented by the numerical value “production.” The game does not account for aspects of a national economy like the unemployment rate, wealth inequality, or anything related to individual workers or consumers. This aggregation of an entire national economy into a small number of parameters can be quite limiting. Conversely, one could argue that the game does begin to consider this in how it handles the in-game value “happiness.” This parameter measures the happiness of your people and for your civilization to operate effectively, it must be maintained through obtaining luxury resources to meet the demands of consumers, spending production on things like zoos, and making sure that there is sufficient food for your population. This parameter adds nuance to the game as an economic model and is thus more valuable as a learning device for macroeconomic public policy.
Douglas (2002) also introduces another idea about Civilization’s model design: Civilization “posits a similar ‘level playing field’ for different cultures at the dawn of human history.” While in the context of his article, this idea’s significance is to the game as a historical model and what themes it asserts, it can also be seen as an aspect of the game’s economic model. In economics, the idea of “Ceteris Paribus,” or “if all else equal,” is used in most economic models and it tells the audience that the model is operating under the assumption that any factors or variables not included in the model are not influencing the outcome. This rule is necessary for a model to result in any conclusion because there is no other way to prove causality (Ansari, 2021). In Civilization, the game developers ensured that this assumption could be satisfied by equalizing the economic variables of all civilizations at the beginning. This strengthens the game’s case as a potential economic model.
Interpreting Civilization as an Economic Model
While most of the scholarship surrounding Civilization discusses it either broadly like Chapman or critically like Douglas, there is some existing work that evaluates the game as a model through examinations of specific game mechanics and how they represent real-world concepts. Zihan Feng, a scholar in game studies, analyzes the game as a model for ecology. Feng (2024) has a more generous analysis of Civilization than Douglas but does not recognize the same possible “intent” behind design choices in the model. Feng doesn’t believe the game designers hoped to create an ecological model, but rather notes that it can be used as one anyway. While the game mechanics Feng analyzes are tied to theories of ecology, they are quite adjacent to economic theory and thus, I hope to extend Feng’s analysis so that it may be used in evaluating the game as an economic model.
Feng’s ecology concept represented by a game mechanic that is most like economic theory is Feng’s interpretation of “spatial constraints” (2024). Feng highlights that at the very foundation of the game, players are forced to move on discrete units of land called tiles. These tiles are very limited and so are the resources they may hold. From a world economics lens, this concept represents resource scarcity. Scarcity is a fundamental principle of economics and in more philosophical terms, represents the idea that humans have unlimited wants but limited resources. In world economics, natural capital is necessary for economic growth because natural resources are either consumed, used in production, or used to improve. Natural capital is so valuable to countries because it is necessary for human welfare (Costanza, 1997). This explanation outlines why natural resource scarcity is so important. In Civilization, natural resources are necessary to gain a competitive edge: In most of the series’ games, players can create a factory, but it requires 1 coal. Factories boost industrial production and are therefore a contributing factor to economic growth, but this growth requires a natural resource. This makes land tiles extremely valuable to the player as if their economy grows, so does their research, military, and cultural capabilities. As a result of this value, spatial constraints create inherent competition in the game, similar to real-world economics. This capitalistic mindset about transnational competition is being suggested by the game and shows its audience the ineffable link between the possession of natural resources and economic power. While scarcity and competition for capital resources are rudimentary economic concepts, they still support the game’s status as an economic model, but the game may have even more nuanced variables that it considers in its model.
In recent economics, scholars have proposed that the amendments that need to be made to economic models are based on the idea that ethicality, societal wellbeing, and quality of life should be prioritized more than they have been as considerations. This idea, normative economics, states that the goal of policymaking should be to focus on maximizing the increase of the collective welfare of a people (Zamir and Medina, 2010). One would assume that an increase in a nation’s economic output translates to an increase in quality of life. However, history sometimes “belies” this principle and quality of life can remain unchanged despite economic growth (Easterlin and McVey, 2007). These ideas are reflected in Civilization because while more resources and sources of entertainment increase your nation’s “happiness,” gold itself shares no direct relationship and some economic policy decisions made by the player that increase economic/production output can lead to long-term negative impacts on quality of life like air pollution. Deforestation and building factories in the game may bring wealth, but Civilization demonstrates nuance through incorporating CO2 pollution as an in-game mechanic. Especially as climate change becomes a larger concern, many economists are looking for economic models that can account for these benefits felt by humans because of the greater ecosystem (Costanza, 1997). While Civilization may be too simplistic and fictional to apply its use as a model for ecological macroeconomics, it still represents overarching principles in modern macroeconomics.
The Economics of Player Decision-making and Player Agency in our Model
At all levels of economics, from bargaining between individuals to the macroeconomy of the world, decision-making and behavioral economics are a vital part of forging an understanding of economics. This type of analysis is especially relevant in Civilization and in an evaluation of its portrayal of world macroeconomics because while Civilization may depict national economies that include entire populations, each national economy is operated by one player in the game. This type of economy, where the government has total control over economic operations, is called a “command economy.” Due to the game involving command economies, we can analyze player decision-making.
Weimin Toh, a professor in literature and language, conducted an observational study where participants played video games and had to rationalize and reflect on their decisions made while playing. One of the major concepts discussed in this study was risk/loss aversion. They found that when playing video games, players often made decisions based on the perception of risk or future loss (Toh, 2021). This rationalization is symptomatic of complex economic decision-making, and it is important to consider when the purpose of your economic model is to understand the patterns of policy decision-making. I noticed parallels to this economic concept in Civilization: A type of building you can produce called a “wonder” has unique, considerable benefits and takes a long time to produce, and if another player finishes production before you, you cannot produce the wonder, and the time and production capability spent is rendered useless. While this mechanic is not realistic to how production works in the real world, it still demonstrates that within the model, the model user can engage in a complex cost-benefit analysis in which choices are weighed not only by their immediate benefit but by their long-term benefit and the associated risk with pursuing those choices. This engagement can greatly improve the player’s understanding of economic decision-making, especially when they reflect on their decision process (Toh, 2021). This exemplifies why video games have unique positive attributes as economic models in that they can foster understanding through first-hand experience and reveal complexities that are only apparent when there is a true human interaction element with the model via an audience.
Another important element of player agency represents how models can change over time as a field of scholars interacts with a model and provides critique. Video games as a model can be revised by their players through “modding.” This refers to the act of changing, removing, or adding game mechanics to a game to alter the player’s experience. Video game studies scholar Trevor Owens examines Civilization as a historical narrative and studies specific mods made by players to alter what he refers to as a “historical narrative” (2010). This is, in essence, the concepts or perspectives that a historical model pushes as its conclusions. When players take issue with these conclusions and the narrative, they can mod the game to create what they believe is a more accurate historical model (Owens, 2010). This easy access to revision makes Civilization and other video games especially dynamic as models because any audience member can easily access these revisions on a public online modding forum. With this opportunity, many modders did center their mods around adding more variables to the model to make it more complex and interesting, or changing game mechanics so they could be more historically accurate (Owens, 2010). This approach to revising Civilization as a historical model could be easily taken with an economic lens that changes the underlying algorithms that produce an economic narrative about world macroeconomics. Player agency and interaction with the model are fundamental elements of video games and excel at cultivating understanding that inert mediums for modeling like mathematical algorithms contained in research papers cannot.
Limitations in the Economic Variables Civilization Considers
Following Zenghelis’ main piece of cautionary advice for economic modeling (2014) which outlines that the most important element of economic models are their input variables, I will analyze specific input variables and more importantly, the lack of some major input variables used in macroeconomics.
Within the game’s design, there is no variable for the aggregate demand of different national economies. This creates a fictitious representation of many macroeconomic concepts when it comes to policymaking because demand is one of the most fundamental variables in economics. Without this variable, players are incentivized to always maximize their production output and the amount of trade routes they have with other players to growth their economy. This is an oversimplification and represents a major limit in the game’s use as an economic model.
Additionally, Civilization has no concept of wealth distribution or even a labor market. Since it focuses on a nation as one entity without examining the details of a nation’s economy on a narrower scale, it ignores such variables. It has no concept of the individual citizen, worker, or consumer. Wealth inequality, for example, has a very clear impact on average wellbeing in society and societies with less inequality generally have a greater quality of life than their counterparts (Nettle, 2022). Wealth distribution and unemployment have clear impacts on the quality of life of people, and yet, since Civilization does not consider these variables, they have no impact on “happiness” in the game and thus, do not need to be considered by the player when making policy decisions. An economist like Zenghelis (2014) would likely call attention to these flaws and assert that these limitations could invalidate the model’s output. The game may follow the broad philosophy of economic modeling, but can it actually be applied to real-world economics to illustrate economic concepts? These critics should then consider the work of Owens (2010), who shows that for the most part, these limitations do not ultimately matter. The game as a model can be amended by its audience and critics by adding these input variables or altering current variables through modding (Owens, 2010). It is acceptable for a model to have limitations, especially when the goal is not to make new economic discoveries, but to advance amateur understanding of macroeconomic concepts.
Conclusion
Like all mediums for modeling, video games have unique advantages and disadvantages that are important to consider when evaluating them as potential models. In many ways, strategy games like Civilization, especially ones that involve public policy, are the perfect video games to model economics because of how they consider resources, benefits felt by the people, and international trade. Interacting directly with a model is one of the best ways to understand it and the concepts it demonstrates. Where it lacks in detail and complexity due to its omission of some variables and overall lack of depth beyond the single units of nation and leader, Civilization excels in audience interaction and the portrayal of broad concepts. Its simplicity likely prevents it from being used to accurately model the evolving real world and inform public policy but if its audience recognizes that its use is as a vivid illustration of wide lens trends and concepts in world macroeconomics, it can be a useful model.
This article did not discuss every relevant aspect of Civilization as an economic model. It did not handle any numerical analysis of the variables in the game and what conclusions this may assert. I never conducted a study of how players interact with the game as an economic model in practice. Filling these gaps could more rigorously perfect an analysis of Civilization as an economic model. Additionally, this article only analyzed one game in one video game genre. Beyond Civilization and possibly beyond strategy games, video games could have further advantages as economic models.
Economists may criticize relating a form of entertainment to a scientific model, but I encourage them to note the game’s limits and failures as a model so that video games as a medium for economic modelling can be improved. It would be beneficial if economists viewed Civilization and similar games as frameworks for how to possibly integrate audience interaction into models and respect these games as models that develop the understanding of those who cannot parse high-level mathematics that are required for some advanced economic models.
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