the destruction of growth

I've been playing around with different CIV scenarios, and I've come to the conclusion that maybe have 50 cities isn't necessarily a good thing.

At the beginning, I'd be so focused on developing my capital city, I'd forget to create other ones for a few centuries. Which would, in turn make my other cities extremely underdeveloped compared to the the capital.

Eventually, I got the hang of the game and started off a half a dozen cities right at the beginning. This worked out for me really well, especially when the cities were spaced relatively far apart, because my trade network became huge. Thus, my handful of cities multiplied at a faster rate because the goods and services that my people had accumulated were more easily distributed. I could send my most experienced settlers and workers to build the cities at a faster rate, and my settlers were not being killed of by the barbarians because my militia was always one step ahead of them.

Then, I got greedy. I wanted the world's greatest empire. Only this time, I didn't want to achieve that title by conquering other countries, I wanted the achievement of building the empire alone. I built approximately 50 cities. The problem was, though, I'd forget about some of them. Maybe I don't really understand the concept of a "turn-based" game too well, but I'd hit enter and the game would skip some-odd years into the future, and half of my cities hadn't improved. Thus this game, which I had started with the ambition of creating the biggest and best empire CIV has ever known, ended in shambles.

The fact of the matter is, that growth is an important factor in success. However, it is important to allocate your resources in a reasonable manner. Distribution of wealth, supplies, and certain important members of your population benefit a nation greatly, but only if they are not stretched too thin.

making something from nothing

...is impossible.

Thus, the importance of picking an appropriate location to establish a civilization. Like Diamond says, the availability of resources and overall development of a group of people is dependent on location.

So far, I have started my CIV games near a mountain (for protections from the barbarians) and an ocean (for trade and fish and because I like the bonus points that you get for being the first to circumnavigate the globe, and living near a major port makes it easier to do so).

This time however, I started my settlements on land that was very rich in mineral resources, but not as rich in agricultural ones. The problem here? My people were not able to make us of the mineral resources for centuries. Which definitely salted my game.

Even though I knew that there was so much wealth ready to be unveiled, right underneath my settlements, I could do nothing to harvest it.

This is like when oil was first refined for kerosene lamps. The people who harvested the kerosene regarded the "leftovers" as something that could potentially be useful, but had no idea what to do with it. These "leftovers" are the basis for what use today as petrol.

There were all these resources and no means of using them. A huge economic no-no. And to add to the problems, I had little of the resources that my people were capable of harvesting. Next time, I'll go back to picking a location next to the beach.

warlords are born, not made

I decided, after completing a few rounds of CIV, that I was ready for the next level, and by next level, I mean Warlord. Because, seriously? If you get to pick a name for yourself, wouldn't you want to be a warlord? In the end, this decision was a mistake.

My game ended so quickly. Even quicker than my first game, where my cities were raped and pillaged by the barbarians because I didn' t have a military. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep up with the development of the other nations. They were growing exponentially AND we're being mean to me in the process.

I had been so used to everyone being friendly, or if they weren't having a good day, hesitiant. No one had ever felt such animosty towards me at first meeting. The Japanese must had been born with some kind of inherent intuition to be nasty to my people. An hour into the game, I had multiple countries ready to declare war on me if I even breathed too loudly.

Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but I think I'll stick to Settler from now on.

This just goes to show that people who are not ready to run a country, should not. Here we are just playing a game, we can experiment how we like and destroy the lives of our "people." But these days, doesn't it seem like we're the ones being played in someone's (ahem...government's) life-sized game? It seems to me that non-chalance that we feel when we push a key to make a decision in CIV, is the same emotion that a lot a world leaders have today when running their countries. That their people's well beings aren't at stake, becasue they're just running their own perverse experiment.

gated communities - bad for everybody.

Lesson #1 in How to Keep Your People Happy? Do not ignore their suggestions.

This week, I decided to start a CIV game in which I would not try to be successful. Instead I decided to rule my civilization with a "because I can" attitude. I was the ruler. They should not dare to question my authority.

Example: No, citizens of Rome, you may not build an aqueduct in the city. You must live among your filth for the rest of eternity. Needless to say, my city eventually fell, most likely to the plague (the game says barbarians pillaged my city, but I choose to stand by my plague theory). Actually, my whole civilization didn't least very long. I concentrated in making my people very smart. They knew all the new technologies centuries before other people did, they were just not fighters. In about 400 AD, my people were in such disarray that it was quite simple for a surrounding nation to conquer mine. Oh well.

While my people were living in the miserable conditions I created for them, I imagined myself to be living in a palace of pure gold, with slaves to cater to my every whim. I was living the good life while my people were slowing dropping like flies.

This is one of the points that Jared Diamond made at his speech a few weeks ago. Even though I wasn't really living the good life while my people suffered, I treated the game as such. I did not care about the health or happiness of my people (do you know how upsetting it is to look at your screen and see a whole bunch of angry red faces staring back at you? my cities = not pleased) I essentially locked myself in a "gated community." This became the reason for the eventual dissolution of my civilization.

As Diamond said, we cannot be members of a global community if we do not care about our fellow man. Sometimes the bests interests of the general public are our best interests as well. Only then will our own civilization be able to survive and prosper.

I'll step off my soapbox now...

the power of persuasion

Did you know that you can convince your fellow world citizens to declare war on others? Because you can. And that is this week's CIV lesson. How to make one weak country declare war on another. That way you can squash the enemy without being the bad guy, the key is the give the country declaring war incentive to do so - maybe a new technology and some gold, this may seem like they're being overcompensated, but you'll be ahead in the long run. Then, when both countries are fatigued by years of war, you take over both of them. Thus doubling the size of your empire.

Because starting any of this devious planning however, you must make sure to prepare your troops. Build walls around all your cities, place warriors in them, have catapults and warships at the ready. It is also imperative to have a complex network of highways and railroads so that your troops can cover a lot of distance within one turn. Otherwise, you're strong troops will be stuck in the city while the enemy is destorying and conquering your land.

Another good mode of attack is to do so from many angles - by land and by sea. I'd add by air to the mix too, but I'm not sure if airplanes exist in our little CIV world (correct me if I'm wrong). It took me a while to figure out (and by figure out I really mean I asked a CIV genius) how to get warriors on my ships to transport them to other lands, f.y.i. ships are so much faster than walking. Attacking from many locations is more effective than just pillaging one city at a time.

So let's review. Modes of transportation, i.e. roads, trains, war ships, are imperative to winning a war. In terms of battle, speed is just as important as fire power, maybe even more so. The moral of the story? No roads, no victory.