Wrap-Up

Throught my experiences with "Civilization", I have noticed numerous aspects of the game that tie in to the detail explained by Jared Diamond in his book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel." As soon as I started with the game, I was simply looking for aspects in it that related to Diamond's book and I found numerous. When I began delving deeper into the game and into creating my own, long-lasting civilization based in Egypt, I steered away from going by the book and began doing things more on my own. What this brought about was a deeper understanding of how civilizations really survived, not necessarilly what was taught to me. In the end, what I realized was that no matter how hard I tried to go about the game trying not to think about the book, the book and its aspects played a deep role in what has actually been accomplished with my civilization. How could one try to have a long-lasting civilization without using what Jared Diamond spoke of in his book? One has to start off as a farming civilization and gradually move into a more sedentary, urbanized center with specialists. The religious aspects of the game, although not necessar, grabbed a lot of my attention because I am naturally biased in my beiefs. As my civilization began to strive, military and defense was a major factory in many of my decisions and I began going to war with anyone who had a problem with what I was doing. In the overall scheme of things, my civilization was very effective because of the lessons that I had learned in class and while reading Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel." I believe that the game, "Civilization" was a great tool to teach the lesson of the class in a much deeper way and I recommend continual use of the game.

help your neighbors?

For the purpose of experimenting, I tried to see how mean I could be to my neighbors until they had enough. The reason why I had the idea to do this was because I was getting mad at my neighbors and other civilizations asking for my help (due to my being much more sophisticated than them). I had enough of Julias Caesar asking me for just a little gold and Ghondi asking for electricity. So I decided not to play Mr. Niceguy anymore and decided to just think about myself. I played almost a whole scenario with this mindset, and it turned out that my civilization stayed as it would have been but the other civilizations were less developed without my help. I though they would get mad at me and maybe even try to go to war with me. But when I declined giving them help, they simply went away and continued to ask me, with no increasing intolerance from them. I was hoping for a little dispute to create some more controversy in my scenario, and I am always looking for a war to kick some butt. I do not believe this is quite as it would have worked in real life times like these, though. If I was to abandon my neighbors, so to say, they would probably want to do something about it in one way or another. A lack of collaboration would probably also hurt my own civlization because a lack of interaction is a cause for less information that you can gain by such interactions.

choice of weaponry

Throughout Civilization IV, you have the option of creating or updating your weaponry, as to protect or to prepare for war. The weapons start off very primitive, such as spears and axes but progress to weapons of today over the course of the game. A common misconception people may have while playing the game is that the newer, more advanced weaponry is the best for all circumstances. For example, players of the game druel over new muskateers and send them out to go fight though they were not used for that. They are better off staying in one location and should be used as a line of protection because they take so long to reload and are not necessarilly good to have on the move. Though you may have newly researched and acquired gun powder, prior longbowmen are much more suited to attacking than muskateers. I am by no means telling you to refuse upgrades on weaponry, but showing you that you should choose weapons carefully and that the more sophisticated weapons are not necessarilly the better ones; it all depends on context and use.

Writing

fairly early on in my most recent game, i decided to make a choice for experimental reasons only. when the game suggested that i start an alphabet and writing, i declined to do so. i did this just to see how much it would stall my progress of my civilization. i found that writing is a key to a society's development just as jared diamond stated in "guns, germs, and steel." diamond mentions that the lack of a writing system or alphabet early on could have been the major downfall of such civilizations. the lack of writing would present numerous problems for a sedentary society. there was not a development of writing in new guinea until really late and look how developed they are now; it is amazing the different lives that they live even today. in history, it is hard to determine whether or not people of mesopotamia would still survive and be as accomplished as they were if they did not create the first form of writing or alphabet, in a pictographic form. it is not possible to determine this but it did help them, without a doubt along with the many other up-sides that these people had early on. in the game, i could tell how much burden not having a written language had on my progress, as it seemed everything slowed down tremendously as compared to other scenarios that i played when i did research writing early on. writing allows for better communication and better for long-distances if a civilization is expanded to any degree. in more advanced civilizations, it helped with record keeping and helps people today understand fairly ancient history.

religion

now that i am accustomed to the game and how exactly to play, almost knowing the best possible strategies, i have begun messing with religion a little bit. in the first few games that i played, i went along with whatever religion that was suggested by the game. this strategy allowed for many differnt religions within my empire, with each differnt city having many religions. i soon realized that it would make more sense to have only one religion throughout my whole empire as it would save a lot of resources. one thing that it would save is numerous differnt religious missionaries. these differnt missionaries take up turns in which you could be generating new technologies or enhancing your military. also, using one religion dissolves the point of building different temples and synogogues and churches which also saves resources and turns like i have previously mentioned. since there isnt any special bonus for having numerous differnt religions, i have realized that a monoreligious empire is probably the best possible move in terms of the religious aspect of the game.

round 2

Okay, so i have tried numerous times to simply take as much land as possible just screwing around knowing that it is not a reasonable exercise to be doing. i found, though, that it was quite simple to conquer other peoples' lands if you simply get ahead of them technologically speaking. if you get the opportunity to get iron and work it early in the game, than you have the best chance for success in domination and defense in the game. the weaker copper tools and weapons that come before iron are far inferior and can cause little to no damage when going up against iron, as iron is much stronger and more dense. this concept is mentioned in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel as a key to some civilizations' great expansion and survival as defense and warfare was an important aspect of many early cultures. iron not only helps for defense and welfare, it is a great agricultural tool. the stronger iron is very helpful in plowing fields as it works much faster because of its strength. the different and better technological advances coincide with each other. for example, the heavy iron plow would not be helpful without the domestication of animals, such as oxen and horses to pull the tool. therefore, in some situations, you can only do so much with one technological advance without the help of another.

Yo, this $h1t'$ addicting!

when prof. Balak told us the first day of class that we had to play a computer game for class, i really didnt know what to expect. maybe cool, maybe lame. definitely sweet. when i began my first civilization, i was instantly addicted and 5 hours later, i was still playing. at first my strategy was quite simple, expand my boundaries as much as i could. i did this using the tools mentioned in Jared Diamond's guns, germs, and steel (ggs) such as producing as much grain and farms as possible and researching animal husbandry for livestock purposes leading to more food. animal husbandry was so prevalent in the fertile crescent- and the main reason it flourished back in the day when other places like New Guinea was unable to make advancements. this may be an inaccurate assumption, but i believe the majority of first timers used the same strategy of expansion without much protection that i did. when i saw that barbarians were attacking me, i thought "no big deal," because i figured that they would be like cavemen that were dumb as dirt and could not destroy my cities. boy was i wrong. these barbarians that i underestimated due to false thoughts of the name "barbarian" totally owned me the first time that played. because i was destroyed so easily, the next time i played, i felt forced to make military and food advancements on equal playing fields, which worked out much better for me. military and protection from invasion was shown to be a vital part of succeeding in this game, and i am surprised that Diamond has not mentioned it in his prologue of ggs at all. because i didnt see protection and military mentioned anywhere as key to success in early civilization, i didnt think that it was vital to survival- i thought that you would probably only need it for invasion purposes. i guess i failed to think that other people are trying to conquer you, as well. dumb mistake on my part. more to come.......