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.......