My time playing civ....the journal.

SecretAgent

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 18, 2015
Messages
21
Location
Michigan
Hello everyone, a new poster here. I just wanted to share what I have been doing with civ 5 and see what everyone thought about it. Share thoughts or anything they may have done similar.

Anyway like most of you I am sure, I have just fallen in love with civ 5 (never played any others). I could explain why but you all know what I'm talking about. Well I'm one of those guys that when I go nerd, I go all the way. Just the way I am. Anyway after learning all the game mechanics I started playing the game with these conditions.

Time: Marathon
Map: Huge-Continents
16 civs with 32 city states
Difficulty: King
Resources: Abundant
Age/Rainfall/Temputure: Random

I have now played almost every civ with these conditions, and it has been quite a long and enjoyable time.

Now for the point of the thread, I didn't just play the game. But the whole time I kept a journal on everything I did. Yes a journal on everything I did. I figured I've invested so much time into each game then why not make it memorable? Anyway let me explain what exactly went into the journal.

The exact year I founded each city, and an explanation of its resources and why I settled there.

The exact year I founded a pantheon/Religion.

The exact year I completed a wonder.

The exact year of each meeting in the world congress, the proposals up to vote and the outcome of each vote.

The year a war started and ended, with a detailed description of the war and why it ended.

The date and an explanation of other major decisions. Sometimes Ill just write down some thoughts and such, and of course date it. (by game years terms)

Additionally I would like to explain how I played the game. I always played on King level. Mostly because I wanted to enjoy these long game and go for the wonders/religions I wanted. I have beaten the game on Deity a few times and do pretty good at level 7, but that's not what I wanted to play. Wouldn't level 5 make the game easy? Well I didn't just play these games to the best thing possible. I wanted to purposefully make "mistakes" and have fun with it. Sometimes a civ I have become really friendly with gets attacked by a massive army. I'm not going to stand for that. So I commit my time and resources to Liberating/protecting that civ for as long as need be. Maybe I'm playing as England and I feel I need a really large navy for no good reason. Does this make sense? I did things I knew were not the best for my civilization at time just for the fun factor. I wanted the feel of each civ in every game. I also capped the amount of wonders I could build if I got to far in tech.

I decided to share this when another friend of mine looked at the journal, he said it was really impressive and I should share this. He says it reads like a history book. For myself it just contains lots of great memories. Now a lot of you will find this really over the top and that's fine. But I figured why not see what others thought and maybe here some cool things other people have done.
 
I can definitely understand this idea of goofing around. On Deity, while you obviously have to feel good about yourself when you win, you really have a small margin of error. Or not, as my first DCL game kind of proves, but the point is, sandboxing it on lower difficulties is something I've seen people on this forums do and enjoy themselves. I find it kind of underwhelming, and I don't want anyone to take it the wrong way, but winning on sub-Deity is not really an accomplishment for me, and I feel like I'm wasting my Civ hours.

However, it's hardly that much over the top, I mean I do remember most of my games that stretched into me not getting rush killed by Keshiks or something, and often my dear girlfriend has to sit through those tales, sometimes she asks me how the hell do I remember all of that, but I just do :D
 
I think there`s a whole thread somewhere where people post their AARs (after action reports) which is much like this.

I tend to do this with good games as it makes me feel I`ve done more than just play a game. I used to do it with Civ4 and the good games like Total War Medieval 2. Haven`t yet with Civ5 though.

I usually buy a good note book when I decided to do this and have a nice Fountain pen so it all looks authentic. I found a really old AAR journal I did about 5 years ago and it did indeed read like a history book with dates of actual events with wins and defeats and how I, as King, dealt with it. :)
 
Hop on over to the "Stories and Let's Play" forum if you want to post the whole thing - I think the few of us who frequent that forum would like to read it!
 
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