It's from Civ 1. Lenin is the leader in Civ 2. Mao was the leader of China all the way up to Civ 4 and was later added like Stalin.

India meanwhile? Gandhi always :sadn

  • DeathToBritain [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    yeah, they've been slowly adding a lot of native peoples and pre colonial states, which is neat. but, civ is this series that just so obviously embodies settler colonialism, and they go for the liberal route of "no see, you can do imperialism and resource extraction as the native Iroquois now! it's not just a Euro American wank fest!" without any analysis of the formula of 4X as a genre with some, dare I say it, critical theory

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Does it really require much of an analysis to conclude that "eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate" involves colonialism?

        • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I think it's the please don't take away my toys defensive posture. Which is fine, I enjoy 4X games. The formula leads to natural conflicts, and conflicts are fun in games. Like it's fine to play colonialism simulators, as long as you understand that this isn't how humans ought to be treated in real life.

    • thelastaxolotl [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      yeah, the civ games are very colonial, humankind looks like a fun spin on the civ games with having a diferent culture on every era, and on the modern era you can choose the most powerful culture

      The Soviet Culture :USSR:

      • DeathToBritain [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        yeah, I've been seeing things about its development here and there. it seems like a much less yikes look at the 4x genre. I think however the whole idea of 'explore, expand, exploit, exterminate' is always going to be an inherently settler colonial framework. you cannot be an anti imperialist in a 4x game, you will lose, it's a genre where imperialism is the only way to play

        • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I think however the whole idea of ‘explore, expand, exploit, exterminate’ is always going to be an inherently settler colonial framework. you cannot be an anti imperialist in a 4x game, you will lose, it’s a genre where imperialism is the only way to play

          I don't think that's necessarily true. For example, Stellaris has plenty of mechanics for building tall and not really expanding very much. You can win by making a lot of friends and agreeing to defend each other from imperialism.

          • DeathToBritain [she/her, they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            you can do that in any of the 4x games, but you will not 'win' the game most of the time by any metric. winning in the context of these games is not about co-operation, but about hegemony, be that through direct militarism or cultural and political.

            • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Sure, but in Stellaris you can win the game that way. I guess all I'm trying to get at is that in a story about an imperial power trying to conquer everything, you can just as easily focus on the ones resisting imperialism as you can the ones doing imperialism. The problem is that typically in the 4X format, everyone is trying to out-imperialism everyone else, but that doesn't necessarily need to be the case.

              • DeathToBritain [she/her, they/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                the game is 100% set up to get you to play the 'everyone is trying to out-imperialism everyone else' game. but, that aside, there are still so many other things in the genre, such as this idea of 'empty unclaimed land' that is just free to be taken and settled, the inherent nature of any kind of historical roster reflecting biases, the unchanging nature of polities as this direct linage back to 'the first ancestors'. it's inherently filled with reactionary ideas and none of the games directly challenge this, they paper over it by saying well you could play tall if you want, or you could play as native americans if you want, that's not a critique of these fundamental conceptions.

                I'm not saying don't play these games, I have thousands of hours in genocidal colonialism simulators like EU4, Stellaris, Civ, and so on. they are fun games. but we as communists must take a critical lense of analysis and dig to the core fundamental ideas being reflected in the ideology of our media, not the mere surface level

          • red_stapler [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            My current Stellaris play through has half the galaxy voluntarily joining my Soviet because it is so based.

    • Noven [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Civ 5 did have Ethopia whose entire thing was defending against large empires