Monday 4 August 2003

Pic of the day: The weak point in my empire is this strait, where a minor part of my lands is separated from the rest. As if you care. I barely care myself ...

Civ3: Too real for fun

So I blew a day on playing Civilization III. Having recommended it for politicians, I felt it was in order to give it another spin myself. Actually I don't think Civ3 is a good choice to start with. The original Civilization or CivWin (Civilization for Windows) is better. The problem with the latest version is the complexity. You have to balance a lot of factors, now also including culture. The earlier versions of the game were simpler, especially the first.

Perhaps it is just the newness of the culture thing, but it seems I tend to go overboard in that direction. Of course, it could just be the kind of guy I am... I thoroughly enjoy when cities outside my borders revolt and seek to join my empire. Then again, that is because I hate war, so this is basically the only way to expand.

But everything has its price. Building temples and cathedrals means less military units. And in the end almost every nation in the world had declared war on me, with no provocation. Well, no provocation except having a really weak military. Sadly, this reflects the real world all too well. Even though all the other nations were in awe of my culture, they still refused to trade with me unless I would pay two for one. In the end they demanded money for nothing, and not getting that they declared war.

Time to test my theory: Battles are won by strategy, wars by economy. I had the lowest military service of the 16 civilizations in the game (I played on the huge world), but a bank in each city and roads everywhere. Sure enough, small ships started to sail in toward the remote, less defended cities. Evidently the computer controlled enemies just happen to know such things without the need for extensive espionage. Anyway, what they did not know was that the spearmen would all be upgraded to musketmen. Having money to upgrade your obsolete units is just so nice ...

The game is approaching the year 1900, but it would require at least one full day more to play it through; probably more. So I'm not going to report the outcome of my strategy. To be honest, I will probably not even play it through. It gets steadily more boring and harder on the wrist, with all the micromanagement. And I have other hobbies too. More about them another day, if any.