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Comment by bdunbar | Hacker News Reader

Agreed 100%. To me, it seems silly -- not to mention cynical and fatalistic -- that the sole purpose of diplomacy in Civilization games is to add a strategic dimension to warmaking.

Out here in the real world, war is a continuation of politics, by other means.

Same thing, really, as your description of Civ II. The goal of diplomacy/warmaking is for one's side to come out ahead of the other.

See Clausewitz, Machiavelli.

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I hope we've come at least a bit further since the renaissance. Diplomacy doesn't have to be a zero-sum game - indeed it rarely is in the real world. War, on the other hand, is very much that. So in that respect, war is the failure of diplomacy, not the continuation of it.

War is actually a negative sum game today; even "winning" you lose a lot. It's not clear to me if this was ever different for anything larger than Viking raiding parties, though.

US-Mexican War, US-Spanish war. US came out far ahead in bt cases, iirc.

That's still possible in a negative sum game; all negative sum means is that the sum of the benefits to all parties is less than the sum of the costs to all parties. So if say the US hoses the Mexicans but good it can still come out ahead as long as the Mexicans go down hard.

I hope we've come at least a bit further since the renaissance.

I may not understand your definition of 'further'.

People are no smarter than they they were in 1500. There are no new cultural institutions.

Our toys are better, but people is still people.

Local regressions aside, I do believe that as a species, we're slowly getting smarter.

Clearly, we are building more knowledge, which is reflected in but not encompassed by our toys.

I'd love to see evidence that people are smarter now than 500 years ago.

More education is available, certainly. But smarter ... I don't see it.

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