
Playing Machiavelli in the Middle East with “Conflict” (2014) - smacktoward
https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2014/11/playing-machiavelli-in-the-middle-east-in-conflict-middle-east-political-simulator/
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iancoleman
At the bottom of the article: UPDATE (November 7, 2019): Thanks to the wizards
at the Internet Archive, you can now play Conflict: Middle East Political
Simulator right in your Web browser.
[https://archive.org/details/conflict_201509](https://archive.org/details/conflict_201509)

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shmerl
You can also check Abandonia.

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christkv
I loved that game. It was a great tool to learn about real-politic and cost of
surviving in a hostile environment. Other great games were Hidden Agenda
[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Hidden_Agenda_1988](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Hidden_Agenda_1988)
and Stalin's Dilemmna [https://www.mobygames.com/game/stalins-
dilemma/](https://www.mobygames.com/game/stalins-dilemma/)

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Udik
> It was a great tool to learn about real-politic and cost of surviving in a
> hostile environment

I've tried to play a game now. The game is a political statement in itself: it
assumes that if you try to keep good relationships with everybody, they will
be trying to destroy you anyway. I really don't see why.

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bhaak
Because the other states are also not that friendly to each other.

If you try to have friendly relations with two countries that are at war with
each other, it makes sense that both will say "hey, why are you friendly to
our enemy?".

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Udik
Because the options of the game are, in part by necessity, extremely
simplistic. If there are tensions between states, you can be friendly or
hostile towards either or both, but you can also try to understand _why_ there
is a conflict and try to defuse it- encouraging diplomacy between them,
pressuring allies to do the same, asking for economic support in exchange for
peace, etc. There are many more options than just "be friendly/ hostile" to
one or the other.

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xamuel
I wonder whether the author of Conflict was trying to make an uber-realistic
simulation, or a fun game. If the latter, the game was a great success, it's a
fantastic game. At some point you have to let chess be chess, you shouldn't
add in all sorts of "realistic" rules about how the bishops can try to convert
each other using theology or how the king can steal a knight's horse, turning
the knight into a pawn but increasing the king's movement range, etc. etc.

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xamuel
I remember playing this game for hours and hours as a little kid, on an old
DOS computer. A fun meta-game is to try and just keep the game going as long
as possible, which means trying to find the right balance of keeping at least
one competitor strong enough to survive but too weak to go to war with you or
someone else. And hope you don't die in a nuclear holocaust caused by some
non-neighboring nations like Iran and Iraq.

