Before starting this class, a friend of mine told me that we
would most likely be playing a video game for class credit and that we would be
talking about our experiences with it. I didn’t and couldn’t believe that we
would actually be doing it, and I’m still sitting here rather shocked. I
thought the game was going to be boring and super technically, but boy, was I
dead wrong. This game has me hooked and I can’t wait to share my experiences
with you.
So far, Civ V has really been a treat to play. I initially
was randomly selected to play as Shaka of the Zulu Kingdom and played on that
until I got the hang of it. I then randomly selected Darius I of Persia to and
led my civilization to world domination. This time around, the civilization
that will be the focus of this blog is Wu Zetian of China. I picked them
because they’re one of the most militarily strong civilizations and I’d like to
see if I can beat the game quicker than how I did with Darius I or Persia. The
game for me allowed me to quickly adapt to the controls as well it was very
easy to learn what was going on. The game placed me where India would be on a
regular map, which was fortuitous of me as I’m on the coast as well as having
some protection from the mountains.
There are a couple of things that don’t make much sense as I’ve
been playing, however. One of the biggest things I’ve seen is that the City
States for whatever reason are able to pretty much keep pace with you
technologically while most of the other civilizations struggle to keep pace. It’s
frustrating to see that it could take me maybe 8 turns to wipe out 3 of the
Huns cities; one of them was their capitol city, to the north of my civilization,
but the city state I attacked shortly after easily handled my attack. My other
main issue is the willingness of other civilizations to quickly denounce you
for taking over a city state or even another civilization. A civilization denounced
me after capturing a couple of cities controlled by the Huns; that same
civilization was at war with the Huns as I was doing this! It’s tough to form
alliances when other, less dominant civilizations are talking behind your back!
In Sid Meier’s Civilization V, one of the key elements it has
to deal with the patterns of population. Population is a tricky subject because
it can be both good and bad for your civilization. If you’re keeping your towns
people happy through luxury resources and building things to keep them occupied
such as coliseums and sports stadiums, you’re doing well. However, if you’re
not tending to the common people’s needs, they’ll become unhappy and as a
result, productivity of your civilization will be down. From what I’ve seen, populations
will no decrease which is kind of upsetting. I think it’d be interesting to have
some kind of random event that can wreck a city thus causing you to change
strategies to balance back. A random event like a plague that potentially affects
all the other civilization that you’re competing against or maybe an earthquake
that is region specific would be interesting to see. Other ways I can alter
population and happiness rates are though social policies, trade, what I unlock
through the tech tree, religion, and finding Wonders of the World.
So far I’m happy with the progress my empire has made
towards total world domination. My next step will be a campaign to eradicate
the Huns out of Europe as well as whatever other city states are there. After
that I’ll likely build my forces up for a large African campaign that should be
very successful.
