Conquering limitations.

The last time I played CIV I explored the best ways to conquer other nations. Conquering is not just something you can do just at any point. It has to be planned out and done well. In past games toward the end of the game I want to conquer a bunch of land so I basically go on a Blitzkrieg to dominate the world. At first this worked, and I conquered many lands, but part of the reason it worked was because it was so close to the end of the game that there wasn't a lot of time for other nations to retaliate or take advantage of my mistakes. The first priority to conquering is having enough military units to fight. You need enough military units to protect the homeland, defeat the enemy, leave enough troops in the defeated cities to defend them, and then still have enough units to push on and repeat the process numerous times. There are many reprecutions to if you don't have enough units for all these tasks. If you don't leave yourself enough units to protect the homeland, then other nations can end up declaring war on you and easily wipe you out. If you don't have enough units to protect the conquered cities, then after you tear through them other nations or other cities in that nation could easily come along and take back the city. Then if you don't have enough units to keep fighting you will end up in a standstill, and allow the nation to regroup and get stronger to push you back. Going into war requires well though out plans, and the readiness for the unexpected like being ready for another nation to get involved and having to fight a war with 2 or more civilizations. Relating this to the real world shows the true military advantage of the United States. There are many factors you don't have to worry as much about because of the location of the U.S. As long as the U.S. stays allies with Mexico and Canada, which is a good possibility, there are only two ways to attack the U.S., and that's from the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean or the air. The U.S. doesn't have to worry about other countries marching through their borders like most countries in Europe and Asia do. This leads to almost never fighting a war on American soil which is a great advantage, and a part to why the U.S. is a world superpower.

Trading

This time playing the game I learned a lot about how trading is an important feature in the game. When you are limited to the resources that are on the land you occupy you must trade to get certain materials you need. A major example of why trade is important, is in certain buildings you can cut the production time in half if you have stone or marble. If you have the resource needed that could save you up to 15 turns or even more to build other things important to your city. In games in the past I had not had access to marble or Stone and went ahead and built those buildings anyway. If I had just found another society with stone or marble I could have saved those turns and built that extra military unit or library in which I didn't get the chance. This directly relates to the real world. There are many resources that we just don't find in our country like silk, sea salt, and rice. These are all resources we use on a fairly regular basis, but the only way to get these resources is to trade with other countries and give them something they need. The other thing that this brings up is the idea of supply and demand. In trading how much you can get for a resource depends on how plentiful it is found (supply), and how many other societies need that resource (demand). Something like fish would have a very high supply because you find fish everywhere, and a very low demand because almost everyone can find fish. Therefore what you can trade fish for, otherwise known in the real world as equilibrium price, would be very little. Now if you take a resource like marble this would have a higher equilibrium price, and you would be able to get more or better resources for marble. This is because there is a much lower supply then fish, and many countries don't have marble, but definitely could use marble. Another important thing about trading is it is a huge factor in Foreign relations. In the game one of the first ways to build trust with other countries is to allow open borders between the 2 countries. This is a positive thing and starts good relationships. Then later in the game when one country doesn't like another they ask you to stop your relationships with that country. This is where you can offend the country for not stopping the relationship, or really offend the other country by stopping relationships with the country. We see this in the real world all the time. Our country does not agree with how Cuba is ran, so they chose to place an economic sanction on the country, and now we can't buy Cuban cigars. Since there are many resources we could supply Cuba with we stopped all trading in order to try and change the way they run the government. Trading is an essential tool in the world.

Balance

and affect your Recently I just started looking back at some of the civ games I had played in the past, and I was just looking at what seems to work and what doesn't and the one common theme I found was balance. In every decision you make there has to be some kind of balance or compromise in what you do. This is a big reason why a candidate like John Kerry, who was so close to the middle and seemed to jump sides at the drop of hat was the Democrats top candidate for the last election. Especially in the CIV game you need balance in building, economic, location, and research decisions. First, in your research you have to cover all sides of research. If you only research things to benefit you militarily, like Archery Bronze working, and iron working, you will have great military forces, but your building, religion, and food production and agriculture will be out of whack society. On the other hand if you focus on the religious aspect you will be far behind the rest of the world militarily. Also what you build needs to have a good balance. As I talked about in an earlier post, you have to have balance in building military units, agricultural buildings/workers, and also cultural buildings. If you focus on one part you will be lacking on many of the others. If you don't build enough military units, you will be very vulnerable to attacks from other countries. On the other hand if you focus too much on the military then your society won't advance as it should, and you will most likely have very unhappy and probably sick citizens. You also need balance in the location of cities. First you have to find a piece of land which will give you a lot of food, but also a high production rate. Also you have to build cities far enough away from each other so that they aren't too crowded, but not too far that you leave the vulnerable to attacks or to be surrounded by another country making that city hard to control. Finally in foreign relations you have to find a balance in sticking with your allies, but not pissing your enemies off too much. Constantly throughout the game other rulers ask you to stop relations with certain countries. If you don't then they get pissed at you, but if you do that could cause problems too. If you stop relations with your allies, they might not be so ready to help you in time of need, and if you stop relations with your enemies that could be what sparks war. Balance in everything you do is a key component of running a civilization, but it is much easier said then done. Balance is an art that very few master, and can never truly be perfect.

How to build cities.

The next time I played Civ I learned a lot about the importance of where cities are built. As the saying goes, "Location, Location, Location." The big key to where you build your cities is water. You have to form a city where water is plentiful. This allows for the ability to make a multitude of farms. You need to have several farms because the key to a great society is food surplus, and the way to food surplus is farming in the civ game. The next big idea of water is for ports. This is very important not only in the Civ game, but also very much so in the real world. This part actually gave me a run for my money the last time I had played CIV. I was decently far into the game, and I was at the point where I wanted to try and discover America. I knew I had researched the ability to create boats, but for some reason none of my cities had the ability to build boats. I finally realized that I had not built any cities actually on the water. Many had land on the water, but the city was not on the water. This was a big problem and there was very little real estate left for cities with ports. Not having ships keeps you from many things. The first hindrance is that you do not have the ability of sea exploration. Although this is not absolutely necessary, it can help a lot in the scheme of things. Next, it hinders your trade possibilities. Without ports you can only trade by land, and when you can trade by sea you open yourself to a whole new world of trading. Finally, without a port you don't allow yourself a Navy. Without a Navy you just leave yourself vulnerable in a time of war. A navy is a necessity in times of war. When you look out into the United States and where the biggest cities are these things don't surprise you in the least bit. The major cities lie right on the ocean. This allows for everything I explained earlier. When you have many different cities on the Ocean and many ports it just helps your country become that much more successful.