FINAL PAPER WITH CIVILIZATION

DESCRIPTION

This is a potentially very fun and informative exercise, which can also help you prepare for your final exam. The project consists of playing and analyzing the classic Avalon Hill board-game Civilization (which inspired, and was ripped off by, Sid Meier’s computer game of the same name). A complete game, carefully played, could take 12 hours or even more.

WARNING: I do not recommend this as an ‘easy-way-out’ solution to your final paper. If you do not like games, or end up in a group with someone you do not like, or who is not willing to put in the effort, this project could turn into a nightmare.

If you wish to take part, you must assemble a group of either 4 or 6 players (not 5). 6 is preferred, since this allows Minoans and Mycenaeans to be integrated. If you want to play but do not know enough people in class, I will put you on a list and assign you to a group. Each group must also choose a leader, who will attend a training session with me and the other group leaders on a date to be agreed upon. The reason for this is that in the past groups have played the game without following the rules consistently, and this throws off the whole exercise. Leaders must take the lead in arranging meeting times for his or her group. Each group-leader will get extra credit for this.

THE PAPER

As you play, make notes for your final essay, consulting with the other players: each player must produce his or her own paper, but the ‘research’ can be a collective effort. There is no fixed length for the paper, but a thoughtful and detailed analysis will probably consume should 3–4 pages, single-spaced in 12 pt. font. It must contain three parts:

1. Map analysis. Print out an 8.5x11 copy of the game-board is available here: http://www.kingmixers.com/CLAS149/CivilizationMap041.jpg. Consulting your final study-map and any other maps you may find (including those on the online PPTs and in Mieroop), label each city-site (black or white square) with its most probable identification. This will not be completely straightforward, since the designers have had to ‘collapse’ various cities into a single city site. Make a note of where this has happened, and what you consider to be the most probable candidate for the identification. NOTE: you do not have to identify the cities west of Greece or Egypt. Also note that our final study map does not contain the Greek cities: but you can find a map of Bronze Age Greece in the Ahhiyawa Problem PPT.

2. Compare the course of events in your game with that of the actual historical record (in broad terms of course). The goal of this section is to help you review for the final. The easiest way will be to follow the approximate date of each game-turn, as given in the Archaeological Succession Table (which is further broken down into Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, Late Bronze, and Iron Age). The comparison will sometimes be challenging because of the game’s level of abstraction. Thus, for example, there are “Babylon” and “Assyria” players, but the Sumerians, Amorites, and many other ethnicities are not explicitly distinguished. You’ll have to think around this: for example, “Babylon” will probably start small in southern Mesopotamia, gradually building one and then two cities. One might compare this phase with the Sumerian period: the gradual appearance of cities may be taken to represent different levels of urbanization. For example, the Uruk period might correspond to one’s first city: but it may be that you build it not on the most probable site of Uruk itself. You would note this difference in your essay. There is no definite length to this section, but the more detailed it is the better.

3. Write a critique of the game as a system. Game theory is concerned with simulating complex outcomes through the interaction of a few simple rules. While many nuances are inevitably lost, other big-picture features can emerge quite realistically. A useful analogy could be the various resolution levels in Google-Earth: if you want to see your own house or neighborhood, you won’t see much of the surrounding countryside, and vice-versa. So what aspects of political and cultural history does Civilization succeed in representing? To what degree does the game's system and board design encourage events to develop along the same lines as history? (For instance, did the super fertile board-territories of Egypt and Mesopotamia indeed lead to cities at an earlier date than elsewhere?). Bear in mind that reducing complex phenomena to a simple set of rules always involves compromise: when identifying such limitations, always look for what was gained in realism as well as what was lost. And remember the game’s ‘resolution level’: each game-turn is approximately 50-100 years, so when you ‘attack’ another player it is not necessarily a specific battle: it could merely represent a gradual migration or other demographic shift. Similarly, major historical figures of military importance are not directly represented, although one might infer such things behind a particularly successful ‘attack’. Moreover, when one players controls a certain area, this might represent cultural influence as much as actual presence of population. Focus your comments on specific rules: some aspects may work better than others, or be necessary for 'gameability'.

4. Please grade each of your fellow group members. Did the leader provide good organizational leadership? Did he or she have a good command of the basic rules, and were they efficient in tracking down answers about specific situations? Did a fellow player make the game difficult by being late, not coming, or constantly sighing with exasperation? I will keep these grades strictly confidential.

A FEW EXTRA THINGS FOR GROUP LEADERS TO KNOW:

UVM’s Print and Mail center made these copies. A few physical features were necessarily modified:

1. Taxes: in the original game, tax/money symbols were printed on the back of the 'men' pieces. However, print and mail center could not do these double-sided. So when you collect taxes from your cities, simply flip over the appropriate number of 'men' pieces and put them into your treasury.

2. Trade cards and Calamities: The trade cards also used their respective levels on their backs (1-9). There is a calamity card for each of the nine stacks. Those from stacks 1 through 5 were printed with a red back, so everyone knew when you got that calamity, and you had to suffer it yourself. But calamities 6-9 had no red, looking like any other card in the stack. These you can trade to other players, saddling them with the calamity. Maybe mark the backs of calamities 1-5 with a red pen or the like.

TIP: Taking breaks:

3. If/When you take a break from the game, you need to record where everything was. Most people use cell-phone cameras, but you can also mark up an online reproduction of the map (see above). Any cards each player may have can be put in the appropriate ziplock bag with your pieces. Make a note also of how many treasury vs. population pieces you have, as well as where each civilization is on the Archeological Succession Table.