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.