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.......
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I thought the same thing, there were so many different ways to start and i had no idea which one i should choose. I did what Diamond had suggested but never knew that i was going to be attacked by everyone. I finally learned somehow that there needs to be a balance between military as well as food production. well we pretty much did the same thing on strategy, but if only it was easier. guess you have to learn what to do before you do it. Nice post
I actually did the exact same thing. When I was just starting out, I concentrated on expanding and claiming as much land as I could to increase my empire. But, instead of having to deal with barbarians, I had to deal with lots of cities but insufficient production. I eventually had to slow down my expansion and concentrate on producing enough to support my cities. It's a good thing you learned what not to do now instead of later when it really could have hurt you.
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