The Final Game

For the final game of Civilization, I think I have finally been able to take the advice of everyone over the course of the semester and find the most productive strategy to winning the game. As the Greeks once again, I started off doing the necessary building of resources. Having an almost limitless supply of resources really makes things easier as you are trying to advance, and also when you are attacked or attacking. It allows you to focus the majority of your energy on the incoming threat, not on trying to get enough resources to survive. In this game I amounted the most resources I have had in any game. I decided to do this because I wanted to do more conquering than I had in any other game.
My next step was establishing trade routes. This was beneficial for a number of things. One it allowed me to get even more resources and use the concept of comparitive advantage to get the most for my trade. This furthered my economic growth and allowed my civilization to advance far faster than previously when I was not trading. Another way this helped though, was it provided a quick way to survey the map and other civilizations. It was a very efficient way to explore the map and see how the other civilizations were progressing. This was key for the next part of my stragegy.
I decided this game that I was going to conquest. In most of my early games I tryed to conquest but usually was defeated, spreading myself to thin over to much area. This time my strategy was one that was used for years in our early history. "Picking on the little guy". I decided to conquer whoever I thought was weakest and it would be easiest to destroy. This worked perfectly because I wasn't spending as much on war, and everytime I defeated a nation I too became stronger and had more land/power. Once I destroyed a civilization I would take over their area and become settled before starting my next conquest on the other weakest players. As I did this and generated mass and power, it made it so much easier to take on the stronger nations as I aquired more strength.
Though I did end up winning the game again by space race, this was definately my best attempt at the game. I became stronger as a civilization than I ever had before and really held my own against some of the strongest nations to ever see this planet.

trade makes perfect

My previous weeks game ended up being another bust. Though I wasn't defeated in battle, I was once again defeated by not being able to develop fast enough. Another country one the space race before I could. I have been trying a lot of different things to make this game work, but nothing has seemed to go right. Thankfully with a little help from Paul who commented on my wall last week, I feel that this new game is going way better.
Well trade might not necessarily make things perfect, but it has helped out a lot. Last week's comment on my blog really opened up my eyes to how important trade is. To start, I began to trade very early and with a lot of countries. This helped in two main ways. One I was able to establish a lot of good relationships with countries. Two while trade helped form friendships between nations, its obvious main purpose allowed me to create a lot of capital for my nation. This allowed me to expand much earlier in the game than normal and allowed me to avoid some conflict that I would normally have to face. I could get to undeveloped land much earlier, instead of always having to fight for it. Also now having trade allowed me specialize in producing certain good, which could then be traded (trying to use the concept of comparitive advantage). Like Paul said would happen, it now took fewer turns to create military mechines, and allowed me to sucessfully control my border. Also after reading Chapter 9 in Heilbroner, I decided to try to avoid conflict more than I normally do when playing CIV. Though America seemed to benefit economically from WWII, in almost all other cases war is just too costly on nations to be able to succeed in both war and economics. I reluctantly decided not to battle as much (even though I really wanted to). This allowed me to keep my surplus money etc. and advance faster technologically than other nations. Finally with a strong border and economy, I completed the space race and won.

Changing it up

With spring break and all, I never got to tell how my last game finished. Though I was having some problems, the game seemed to go pretty well right up into the future. I did not win unfortunately, but it has been the first game that I was not completely destroyed by my enemies. Instead the Germans one the space race, which I too was very close to completing. The Germans did seem to have a better infrastructure at the end of the game that would lead them to advance much more technologically than me. They had really great trade which I seemed to lack as I got later into the years of my civilization. Either way it was a great game, and a success to me considering I wasn't massacured by 5 other nations at once like usual.
This week though, I decided that I wanted to change up my game style a little bit and try to get some more and different aspects out of Civ. As you can tell from my blog thus far, I have consistently been playing as the Greeks and usually try to win the game by conquering territory and using a lot of force. This game I wanted to try to play with the romans, and even though it was not characteristic of the Roman civilization tried to be a pacifist type player.
The way I started the game was as I have any of the others, stronge resources, stronge military, and as many technological advances as I could make. The challenging part with this style of play is maintaining a relationship between rival nations. My country still needed to expand, and it is especially tough to do this when you are not playing a conquest style game. However, there was ways via trade and other techniques that allowed me to expand without just taking what I needed. This was unfortuanally shortlived. The problem came when my two nations were in conflict and I could not stay on friendly terms with them both. For the survival of my own civilization, I was forced to go back to my old style of play, evoking stronge military force onto other nations. Right now I am in conquest with the Greeks and the fight seems fairly even, though I expect to pull ahead soon with a wave of forces I just built.
Until next week..........

doing better

So this is the first week that I actually havn't died and made it into the modern era. I think the main thing that I did differently in this game was found a balance between all the foundations of a powerful society. In past games I have focused on one particular thing; expansion, food supply, soldiers, etc. This game I have tried to moniter myself very closely, and set rules for myself as to when I want to expand and the number of soldiers I wanted to create. My first objective early in the game obviously was food. I made myself a very solid foundation for my civilization. As I went on in the years, instead of focusing on either having a lot of soldiers or developing my technology as much as possible, I tried to find a good median. This worked out a lot better than my previous attempts with a lot of primitive soldiers or very few modern warriors. I basically used this strategy for everything throughout the game as I went on. Though I didn't develop quite as fast as some of the other nations, I made up for it in numbers. When going to war, a lot of the countries were just overwhelmed by my civilizations solid foundation. Every single city I made, I built with ultimate protection and resources. I still have not finished this game, but I am looking pretty well set to win either by conquest (which will take a lot longer), or possibly by space race as soon as I advance some more years.

this game is brutal

After last weeks fiasto, I decided to try the same strategy but employ it better. However, it did not work out much better than the first time. In my game last week, I tried to do a lot of expansion, but my problem was I didn't have the economy or resources to back it up. During this weeks game I decided to make my economy a top priority while still exerting military dominace. It turned out to be much harder than I expected.
Once again, I decided to play as the Greeks. Since I am still trying to develop a strategy on winning the game, I thought it would be better to just play with a civilization that I am comfortable with an know pretty well. As I started out, my primary focus as usual was on food. Every turn that I could produce a farm, or somehow advance production (such as animal husbandry), I used to provide a economic and resource bedrock for my Greeks. My idea was to gain as much resources as I could, and then make soldiers in sets of 3. I thought this would allow me to bulk up in a short time before setting out to conquer other nations. However, it actually made military production and advancement very slow. Before I could even think about setting out and conquering someone, the Romans were attacking my outer colonies. As they were attacking I found that they were technologically more advanced than me. Even though I definately had more soldiers to protect my civilization than Rome was using to attack me with, the Roman army was so much more advanced that it probably would have taken at least twice as many soldier as I had to stop their invasion.
I think that I must be playing the game ineffeciently. I cannot think of any logical reason why I should be technologically so far behind some of the other civilizations other than my own mistakes from game play. I think I may read more about the game before attempting my next try at it. Until then, I think I may try to keep a similar military strategy, but instead on focusing on numbers, find a balance between advancement and military size. I also may explore some more economic pursuits. I still have not used the sea as a resource, and considering I always play as the Greeks, it would probably be a good idea to use such a huge resource that is available to me.
o well, better luck next week i guess.....

making progress....

After being utterly destroyed in my first try at civiliation, I am slowly making it further into the future everytime i play. I decided to try to play as the Greeks again, and utilize a different strategy. Instead of just trying to survive like I did at first, I decided to play like the ancient Greeks actually were and try to conquer my neighbor's.
When first starting the game, my initial goal was to gain as much food as I possibly could in order to support soldiers. I advanced as normal, usually following the games recommended path for advancement. I felt that my biggest competition in the game would probably be the Romans, so I sent out to destroy them first before they could get to big of an army and advancement. This worked out well I took over their territory. However as I advanced north, I lost a good amount of my troops and starting spreading my empire to thin. Before I knew it, I couldn't even hold off barbarians. In the end I ended up being defeated by France i think, a totally unexpected destruction since they were on of the few civilizations that I tried to keep peace with.
The next time I try to go out and conquer, I will make sure that I have the resourced and sufficient people to both conquest and protect my land.

First Try at Civilization 4

The first attempt at creating my own civilization went pretty rough. I thought the game would be incredably simple for me, considering i have played some other strategy games like age of empires, etc., but Civilization is extremely complex. Some problems I had just with the gaming aspect, besides the technicle difficulties my computer had, was getting used to the turns system. I would start researching a technology, and instead of making everyturn after that a useful one, i would instead just try to use them as fast as possible to i could acquire the technology.
This put me at an extreme disadvantage in the game. I was trying to get a good foothold for my civilization (the greeks); and tried to do a fundamental aspect of making a civilization strong, a food surplus. However I found the characters very hard to control, and wasted a lot of turns trying to place farms in a particular place. Due to this lack of knowledge on the game's style, I noticed all of the sudden that the other civilizations seemed years ahead of me. Also people who I thought were my allies, or at least neutrals, started breaking our agreements and attacking me. At this point I tried to advance as fast as possible but it was really to late, and my cities were destroyed.
Another reason my society failing was a lack of scouting. Since I felt the characters were so difficult to control, I did not make scouting a top priority. Therefore I feel since I did not get a good account of the land, I didn't pick the best locations for additional cities, and didn't get a sense of where my enemies were to see their strengths and weaknesses. The next time I play, I think I will make scouting a priority and see if it helps later on.
The final reason that I lost, was that even though I had a fairly good amount of warriors, they were all spread out between my cities. This may have also been a problem with me expanding to quickly.
Bottom line, next time make every move matter, and dont expand so fast. Plus the other details mentioned above I think I will be able to do much better.