OFF: Amber Revisited

[M Holmes]

Andrew Gilham writes:

> Just being cheeky for a moment - doesn't the urge to play "god" games, in
> which you are the central planner of an entire society, hold some
> contradictions with being a libertarian? :))

You're the first person to ask me that, but in fact I had anticipated
this. In Civilization I played a scenario I called "Libertarianism". You
had to win despite two handicaps:

1) You must always set the tax level to zero.

2) You must never attack another civilisation.

It was still possible to win. By setting tax to zero, you could up the
science rate and have a good chance of having better technology than
opponents. For money you could build city improvements (like
universities say) and then sell them. There was also retaliation if
someone attacked you since you usually get some money when you take
their cities and you can also sell the improvements in those afterwards.

Such a scenario would be harder in Civ II because the initial forms of
government (Despotism and Monarchy) don't allow a tax rate of zero -
you;d have to alter the technology tree to allow Republic and Democracy
immediately to do that. There's also the problem that with the improved
diplomacy, an enemy would be able to sue for peace soon after attacking
you so that you couldn't raise much money by retaliation - though I
guess you could demand fair compensation through tribute.

> Andy Gilham/Andy_Gilham at msn.com/Andy_Gilham at compuserve.com

FoFP