Might be a bit of a strange topic, but one that came up recently for me.

Got Civilization 5 a while ago on a sale, started playing a couple of days ago and enjoying the hell out of it.

I got Democracy 3 when it came out as well, that one is pretty nice too.

Now, my approach to these two games is very different. In Civ 5, I try to win and don't care much about the ethical nature of how I do it. Right now, I 'm playing as Venice and am basically doing a Rothschild and financing multiple other nations to wage war against each other while I profit. Previous game I raped them on the seas with Polynesia.


In Democracy 3, though, I really try to implement my own political and religious views into running that country. I tried to make the US an atheist and socialist utopia, got assassinated by nuns 3 years into my presidency. Was pretty bummed about that


So anyway, do you use your views in these kinds of games (grand strategy and political strategy) and sorta reverse roleplay it, or do you just do whatever it takes to win, or a combination of both?

In answer to OP... not rlly. I loved getting all mega crusader on the Moors in Total War. I kinda just put myself in the shoes of the people I'm playing as and go from there.

I enjoy sandbox oriented games with player driven economies. I've played EVE Online for a very long time because of its Capitalist Warfare in Space theme, complete with economic pvp and spaceships that actually blow apart and cease to exist when you lose them, all being made by asteroids being mined and refined by fellow nerds at their desks using schematics created through research and science. It is a neat game, probably greatest MMO of all time so far. Definitely not a carebear game like WoW or the other easy themepark MMOs that have been the staple.

I tend to buy Sony stuff over Microsoft in gaming (PS4 vs XBOX One), but only because I've had such bad experiences with Microsoft console quality in the past.

I play a very populated (1000-1500 online at any given time) private Everquest Classic server that is going from the initial release up until the Velious expansion (Everquest classic...the Brad McQuaid years).

I enjoyed the political themes in Bioshock and think games are at their best when they make you think deeply about serious ideas (philosophy). Bioshock did a great job at playing with the Free Will vs. Determinism dichotomy in the third one. Planescape: Torment got me thinking about some pretty serious ideas as a youth.

I play WOW on a priv server where there are no admins to prevent economy interference, and i use my half-assed-libertarian ideals to buy low and sell high on unsuspecting noobs who arent smart enough to know prices.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Aug 19 2015 08:49am

So in other words ur a scam artist? Nice to know.

selling things on the market in WoW is scamming? good to know

I typically try and immerse myself in whatever game I'm playing as much as possible and not let my personal opinions or biases affect my experience.

That's kind of part of the fun, especially in RPGs.

Lol scam is a bit of a stretch. The actual blizzard servers prevent market manipulation because it is (in their opinion) not in the best interest of the population. Not only because it takes advantage of those who are unfamiliar with prices, but can also be used to withhold mats to artificially increase demand. This is however a fairly representative model of some real life economies, its just not very "noob friendly" as it takes practice and the addition of addons to accurately track prices.

Its one of the reasons i play private servers, other than the older expacs are better and i dont like to pay the $ for a game i only play on occasion. Its quite easy to target certain mats and become a massive gold hoarder. I tend to just use it to buy overpriced bind-on-equip epics though, so i at least im putting gold back into the server so the economy doesnt become stagnant on my account. If anyone plays The Rebirth vanilla realm in this sub plz pm me, id love to have some more friends for runs on that realm.

I like to play age of empires and specifically target homes, markets, town centers, churches, and civilian populations of my opposition.
And then I watch as their system crumbles and mine flourishes
I avoid their military forces just so I can break the spirits of their people first, and once that is done I give them my permission to die

Pretty sure thts the server my mage is on tbh... Alliance or horde?