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So apparently there’s some online strategy game called “Civilization VII” scheduled to be released next year (I’m not terribly interested in the entire subject of such games) and there’s an ongoing drama on Reddit and other venues due to the creators adding Harriet Tubman of all people as a playable political leader.
This rang a bell for me because I was reminded that there was some sort of political campaign a long time ago to replace president Andrew Jackson’s portrait on the $20 bill with hers, because he was a slaveholder genocider racist and so on. I looked this up on Wikipedia and it seems that this has merely remained a plan so far.
Anyway, concluding that she must be some relevant figure in the US culture wars, I looked around on the SSC and Motte subreddits, plus this site, but I found that there has never been even one discussion on her so far. I looked up Askhistorians and other similar subreddits and concluded that any discussion on her life is resolutely suppressed by the mods (all dissenting comment chains get deleted basically).
Being a dissident rightist this obvious case of information suppression piqued my interest, so I looked up John Derbyshire’s website because I’ve usually followed his work. I found this rather hilarious piece of information (emphasis mine):
We have very few facts about Tubman's life and activities. Most of what people think they know comes from her own testimony, as narrated to friends after the Civil War. There are two problems there.
First problem: Tubman, who escaped from slavery in her mid-twenties, was illiterate all her life. She left no paper trail in the way of letters or diaries. Until her forties, when friends started taking down her reminiscences, we have only her word for the events of her earlier life.
This wouldn't matter so much if we didn't know she had brain problems: narcolepsy, delusions, apparently epileptic fits. Tubman acknowledged these problems, saying they were the result of a blow on the head she received in childhood. Perhaps they were; but again we only have her word for it.
Whatever the cause of the brain problems, they surely weren't Tubman's fault. They weren't my fault either, though, nor yours, nor Andrew Jackson's, and they do cast a cloud of doubt over her stories.
Second problem: Tubman's friends got Sarah Bradford, a successful fiction writer, to produce Tubman's autobiographies. This was after the Civil War, but the tradition of abolitionist propaganda, whose greatest success was of course Uncle Tom's Cabin, was still alive, and Sarah Bradford likely saw herself in that tradition, as the literary heiress of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Tubman then sank into obscurity until leftist writers of the 1930s took an interest in her as part of their general critique of U.S. society, which they compared unfavorably with the new system of justice and equality being established, according to them, in the Soviet Union.
In short, the Tubman story originated with her own unreliable recollections, and was then promulgated by people all of whom had agendas.
Harriet Tubman may have been — on the scattered evidence we have, probably was — a brave and resourceful person. Still, her story belongs much more to the realms of myth and propaganda than to history.
I found this mildly amusing. And on a scale of 1 to 10, the level of my surprise is maybe 3.
I should get around to upgrading to civ 3 one of these days. Seems like most of these long running game series peaked at 2 (age of empires, star control) or 3 (homm, arguably, although I still like 2 better)
Having played all of them, 4 is the absolute pinnacle of the series, especially with the “beyond the sword” expansion pack. I fire up a marathon campaign on a huge terra map (which has all the civs on one Eurasia style continent but leaves at least one continent unoccupied except for Barbarians) every single year, and it’s usually a 40hr investment or so. Been playing it basically since it came out in ‘05
There is (or was in the past) a BetterAI mod who made the AI a bit more capable. In CIV 5 and 6 war is a snorefest, as moving many units with the new one-unit-per-tile is cumbersome, and the AI doesn't understand tactics. Multiplayer is okayish in CIV 6 though.
There is a fan overhaul mod called Vox Populi, that for my money, makes Civ5 the best in the series. I started with Civ way back in Civ 2 and have played them all, including Civ6. I highly recommend it. Its main focus is improved AI play and i think they accomplished their goal and made it much more replay friendly. Once you "solve" civ on Diety the game gets quite boring.
I've never played above King, mostly because I value my time, but also because I'm not the best player and would be cheating and reloading every other turn. What do you mean by "solve" at Deity? what's the trick?
Pick bablyon / korea / poland. The strat is tall + science. Get 3 to 4 cities ASAP. Trade resources to get gold per turn to buy settlers. Get a few workers out, then library in each city. You should have national college in your capital before turn 100. Your early game army should be compound bow. Tech tree wise you are basically just going for the science techs (library, university, public schools), and secondarily growth techs (for more pops and therefore science). You should overtake the AI in tech around the industrial age.
The problem is that this is very boring, there is basically only one way to win. All games on Diety start out the same way, see above. There is no building wonders, no early aggression (unless cheesing), no culture or religion. All game mechanics are ignored except for science maxing. There is an optimal way to play, and its also the only way you can win on Diety. So its boring, there is no player choice, even they tech tree path and order you take is more or less decided before the game starts. Same with army: you will go archer -> compound bow -> xbow -> gatling gun and then bombers. If you don't, you will die. It also relies on the AI being dumb and the player easily cheesing them (trading early res for gold, predictable diplomacy, total inability to fight on water).
Also some starts are mega OP and can decide the game for you - salt + plains is OP, jungle + luxury a restart.
The only Cheesing I'm aware of is from South Park: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7kA4qgOc94M
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To be pedantic it’s ‘deity’.
‘Diety’ is when the difficulty is so high you’re losing weight from stress :P
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