King of the Road

Before I began playing Civilization 4 by myself, I had a friend show me the ‘ins and outs’ of the game. He told me the basic idea of the game and gave me pointers and tips on building a successful civilization. One of the things he told me was to build roads.

At the time, I didn’t really think about his advice: build roads. I was absorbing so much information at once, it went in one ear and out the other. Now, from having played Civilization several times, I understand his advice and its wisdom. Roads, roads, roads are so important! I like to keep several ‘spare’ workers about, just to develop roads connecting my cities, farms, hamlets, windmills, etc.

Building roads gives you distinct advantages. Obviously, people can move around quicker. This is important when you need more workers to develop land over yonder, or you need to move troops pronto! to another city, or you want the random wise person to inhabit a different city. It increases the mobility of your culture, which is important for resources to be able to spread.

Also, it would be a good idea, if declaring war on one of your neighbors, to build a nice road leading into their land. It takes so much less time to get your troops into their country, so complete conquerization is quicker.

The Romans understood the importance of roads- hence the saying “All roads lead to Rome”. They developed a complex system of roads to aid travel, which helped them
economically, as merchants, traders, and farmers could travel faster,
culturally, as travel was easier for old wise men and people of an important nature
And militarily, as they could have highly mobile troops.

Lucky for America, Dwight D. Eisenhower also saw the importance of roads. He developed the Interstate Highway System during the Cold War so that large cities could be evacuated quickly in case of a crisis (wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#Presidency_1953-1961) This also has aided America in many ways, as the roads have proven to be critical to the country’s connectedness.

So my advice for the game, I suppose, would be to learn from the civilizations that have done pretty well for themselves in the past and the present. Develop roads.

Domination and Conquerization

Again I have had a very positive experience with Civilization 4. I have been playing the same game for a while, and I have 10 million souls in my country! I have the highest score pointswise, and I have three of the top 5 cities for culture. I have alot of world wonders as well as famous people in my cities. The other countries do not have as advanced technology or military; also I have the richest country. I was on good terms with everybody; life was looking up for my citizens.

I decided it was time to declare war.


Not on just anyone, mind you, but on my neighbors. Up to that point, we had relatively good relations, especially when I moved to free religion as I could no longer be viewed as a pagan. However, my neighbor was weak... and I wanted his land and resources.

So I developed a mildly organized strategy. I began to build up my military in the cities with the fastest production rate. My slowest cities (production wise) I still concentrated on culture. For example, I built musketmen in 3 of the cities where it only took 4 or 5 turns. In the cities that would take longer than that, I had build world wonders or libraries or national epics, etc. That way, I was not neglecting culture or science, and my people were still pretty happy.

Most importantly, I strengthened my relations with other leaders through various trades and such. When the United States went to war with Iraq, the first thing they did was to make sure they had a backup posse- Britain, China, etc. When World War 1 began, everybody claimed sides. Ditto for the second. In the Cold War, we clung to our allies to appear stronger than Russia. Clearly there is something to being good friends with everyone.

I began to move my military to the cities closest to the border we shared. Soon I had gathered enough. The day was ripe for strife. I declared WAR! on my neighbor, suprising him I imagine, and began to move my people to take over his cities.

It was complete domination. While I had some frustrating battles watching my musketman get clubbed or piked or evil eyed, overall I decimated his land. I say decimate, but in reality I did not destroy any of his farms, pastures, or towns. I wanted to take over the country, so it made little sense to me to destroy its assets and then have to rebuild those later. Perhaps if I had to take over a more advanced civilization, I would take out factories and such. However, in this case, I just took over everything.

When I had about 2 cities left to conquer, their leader approached me for a peace treaty. as if.

My success was complete. It could be compared to when Hitler and his Nazis took over Poland seamlessly and easily. Not that we're Germans or anything. The time is coming where we might declare war again, but right now I am focusing on building up my assets and developing my new cities!

Holy Guacamole Batman!

So there I am, building my civilization. I have scouts exploring the surrounding land, meeting the neighbors, pillaging small villages. I have workers ardently farming and building hamlets and such. I even have warriors, being still too primitive of an age for soldiers or gunmen (or guns, swords, etc). I am building my cities, making sure they have an ample food surplus, developing my technologies as much as possible, making settlers to start new cities.

Then- holy guacamole batman!- one of my cities falls to marauding barbarians.
This game being one of my first, I was astounded. How could this happen? I had warriors guarding the city, who I had to watch perish at the hands of my nomadic nemesis. As the city's founder, I was devastated as the barbarians ravaged my land. They destroyed the surrounding farms and pastures I had oh-so-carefully created. It astounded me that my structured, seemingly safe city could be overthrown in about 2 moves, too short a time for reinforcements to arrive. I had enough of a civilization to be termed a "chiefdom" in Diamond's estimations, yet this "band" of barbarians had captured my city!

I guess I should have seen it coming. When discussing the band, tribe, chiefdom, state progression that civilizations go through, Diamond elaborates: "More complex units don't always conquer less complex ones but may succumb to them, as when the Roman and Chinese Empires were overrun by "barbarian" and Mongol chiefdoms, respectively." (281)

The Mongols were a nomadic group arranged in various tribes that became trapped among more advanced civilizations until Ghengis Khan united them in the 13th century. He turned them from tribes into a chiefdom, ruling over the mongolians and terrorizing their neighbors.

Perhaps it was Mongol barbarians that took over my city(s). I don't know. Next time, however, I am going to be more proactive when it comes to attacking threats to my civilization.