How to Destroy Civilization

II.

There are a lot of stories I could tell about the game, but the one I want to tell is a parable of how Trump won the Republican nomination.

Crete, played by a player who credibly was willing to fight a war even if it meant going down in flames (partly because he was going down in flames by default regardless), decided to start attacking other players. He had the choice to attack, and therefore hurt, whoever he wanted. At first, the motivation was to do what was best for Crete. When that first attack brought no retaliation, he attacked again where he would benefit most and also took a cost-less opportunity to hurt my position. No one wanted to do anything about it, because that would motivate Crete to attack them instead of other players. The next turn, he attacked two more players, and did his best to hurt people’s positions even when it didn’t help him, counting on his credible threat to retaliate against anyone who stood up to him. Out of the six other players, he had now hit five of us.

Given that this is a trading game, we had an easy solution to this: If we all just stopped trading with Crete, no amount of war would do him any good, and he would be left in the dustbin of history.

Despite that, everyone else seemed content to sit there and take it, other than one of them trying to retake the city Crete had raided. People thought Crete was weak, and could not actually win the game, so better that he not turn his eyes and fleets in their direction.

I decided not to take it. It was a matter of principle. Madmen cannot be allowed to win the day by threatening to engage in destructive behavior and destroy those who stand in their way. At some point, one must retaliate and stand up to bullies, or bullies will rule. We are told that what they are doing is ‘irrational’ but if it works, why is it irrational? We are told that striking back against this is ‘irrational’ but if it is clear the good people of the world won’t stand up to this behavior, they are asking to be curb-stomped by it over and over again – and we would basically deserve it. Decision theory says we must fight now, so that we did not have to fight in the past and do not need to fight in the future; pacifism is a losing strategy. Our desires for justice, for revenge, for retaliation sometimes gets out of control, but it is that risk that keeps the bullies and evildoers in check. We remain civilized in part because everyone has their breaking point, and you can never be sure where that point is.

And again, all we had to do was agree to stop trading with the pirate king. If you can’t agree to stop trading with a bunch of pirates who are raiding your cities, in a game with no stakes, what hope do we have standing up to real bullies in real situations with real stakes? Will evil always triumph over good because good is dumb?

So I declared an embargo against Crete and called upon the other victims of his aggression to join me. When Crete explicitly threatened to attack anyone who joined, I promised to help defend the cities of those who cooperated, and to give better pricing to embargo members than non-embargo members, with my intention to be slightly nicer than normal to allies and much less nice than normal to those who were attacked and yet wouldn’t join.

What did the others do?

Illyria, who Crete hadn’t attacked, announced they wouldn’t cooperate. I’d expected that, but had hoped for better.

Africa joined the cause, but was already on really bad terms with Crete and the two of them basically never traded, then demanded I give him increasingly better terms even when we’d already agreed on terms, because I’d said that embargo members get a ‘good deal.’

Assyria outright asked to be bribed to join the coalition.

Egypt didn’t even give me a chance to bribe him and just traded with Crete.

Only Babylon agreed to cooperate, and likely only because he absolutely needed to do a large trade with me that turn or we both would suffer, and even that was as part of our deal.

Around this point, I managed to find a replacement, so the story will continue without me. I hope the new Iberian president can brig home the victory, but I fear that everyone will just keep being nice to Crete and he will find a way to catch up and maybe even win.

III.

In case it isn’t clear yet, the nations of the game are the candidates, and Crete is Trump. No one thinks he can win, but he’s good at hurting others, so everyone treats him nicely and cooperates, hoping he’ll clear a path for them to win. He hits more and more people, and when anyone starts hitting back, he threatens to hit them even harder instead of hitting others. If someone threatens a fight, he says bring it on, cause he’s got nothing to lose.