Strong Beginnings

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.