Almost, forgot, posting

Almost forgot to make a post today. I haven’t made a whole lot of progress in regards of programming really. I also guess I may need to loosen a bit on the “one post a day” thingy. I must have like at least some time in the week when I can rest and stuff. I’d also like for people to comment if they read this blog. That would provide me with feedback as well as possibly ideas about things to write about.

Hmm… What should I write… I like video games… Oh yeah, I used to play a lot of Civilization 3 back in the day. It is a strategy game, which is like a board game but way too advanced to be an actual board game. This game is like the ultimate proof that computers can enable us to create super mega board games that wouldn’t ever be possible to have with a physical cardboard and a pair of dices. You start a normal game in Civilization 3 by just having a settler. You can use the settler to found a city and then your so-called turn is up. This is a turned-based game which means that you and your enemies have a restricted set of possible moves or modifications that you can do during one turn. When you have decided that you are finished you must register that into the game and await the following turn that enables you to continue playing. It could be seen as when playing chess where each player makes one move and then waits for the other to do his move. However, as with another miracle of “computer board games”, is that when playing in multiplayer mode online you can have so called simultaneous turns. Which means that every player (up to 8 in this case) makes their move at the same time! Imagine playing monopoly and having everyone throwing a dice and buying and selling streets at the same time. It gets too messy to even imagine it. I guess that is just one more thing to add to the list that inspires me to program and create games.

To continue with the gameplay; after you found a city you can research technologies. These technologies give you numerous benefits, like stronger army units, enabling building stuff in your cities as well as government types. You can use your city to build army units which are needed to explore the map and defend against barbarians. You can also build more settlers if you have enough citizens or workers to make improvements in the area around your city. And you can build stuff that give various bonuses like barracks, that gives new army units one extra health. Some buildings cost you tax however. And it’s not only buildings that cost money; army units, research and corruption are also things that add up to a pile of money which you will need to find a way to pay for as you play. And you better have all those things if you want to stay competitive with the other players (you don’t want corruption of course, but it will cost you to hold corruption down).

When you have chosen to research something you can start exploring the map, negotiate deals with other civilizations Donald Trump style, build new cities, attack other players etc. There is also a limited amount of both strategic recourses as well as “luxury goods”. The strategic recourses have various importance throughout the game. I.e. iron, oil, aluminium, uranium, horses are such recourses. Iron is important throughout the entire game and if you don’t have it you’d better attack whoever has it like a crazy orangutan as soon as possible or you will be at a major setback. Luxury goods keeps your citizens happy, which prevents riots.

When I first started playing this game I didn’t understand English. I can’t really say that it taught me much English either, but I did enjoy it. I did eventually learn English and then the game started to make much more sense. One thing that I didn’t learn until a long period of time is about the government type that you start with, despotism. It really limits how much your cities can produce in terms of food and money. So, to sum up, get rid of despotism as soon as possible. What I ‘liked’ about despotism was that you can sacrifice citizens to hurry a production in a city. That can be beneficial during wars, but now that I know how much despotisms limits you it is not worth it. Unless you play with a peculiar game style involving spamming as many cities as you can and mass-producing army units.