I played Civilization in the 90's and have recently gotten back into it. It's been fun to find this forum and after lurking for a couple months, I thought I would introduce myself. What better way than to tell you about my recent game?
I played a random map, emperor difficulty. I played straight-through without any use of save-reload (no re-rolling), and the only exploit I used was manipulating the shield box (e.g. buy-switching). While playing the game I did not intend to give a recount of it but I will share some highlights.
I started on a small island, about 20 tiles tall and ~8 tiles wide with some river in the middle, some plains up top, some hills southeast and arctic down south. I founded Paris at the mouth of the river and after producing a couple militia to quickly scout the island, once discovering I was alone on it, I concentrated on settling the island with settlers. I only ever built about 11 cities on my main island, about 2-3 spaces apart from each other (somewhat crowded), but had most of them built (at size 1-2 population) by 2000 BC. I was over-expanded in that once barbarians came and plundered two cities, but I rallied some forces to defeat the barbarians and re-founded the cities.
Being alone on my island I first decided to go for economic power and led my tech discoveries towards Republic. Civilization advances came fairly quickly in the beginning, I kept my rate usually >= 60% science and had a few cities working in the ocean, one even on gold, for trade. I was "content" with city sizes of about 2, at most 3.
I discovered Republic in 1800 BC (thank you replay data) and switched to it right away, but it was a mistake. The loss of martial law, and the fact that cities now had to work low-food (and zero-trade) squares in order to support military units, who were themselves now half-useless, made that clear. So after one turn of looking at city-screen results, I switched back to Anarchy and then Despotism again.
I had by now explored my coasts by trireme and located two adjacent islands, and explored them with diplomats, but they were empty. If I saw a hut near the coast I would enter it on my unit's first turn, then retreat to the ship if barbarians hopped out, but that's the only way I would open huts this early (I did make one lucky escape this way). I located the south pole and let a diplomat undertake the lowly task of circumnavigating it, but he would never spot land nor find so much as a hut. Meanwhile, unless I wanted to send triremes on "leap of faith" expeditions, I was locked out of exploring further, and still had not encountered any other civilizations.
My cities were in a bit of a quagmire. Growing slowly with few shield or trade to spare. After my "failed" revolution, I felt like I couldn't progress, and with the clock ticking, felt like I couldn't stand still. In hindsight it was basically impatience and just needed time for roads, irrigation, and mines to work their magic. But, not realizing this, I decided to go for Hanging Gardens (Hey, I like Hanging Gardens) to get over the hump. I would do it with caravans.
In 1720 I discovered Trade. Also in 1720, the Chinese built the Hanging Gardens.
Shanghai. Not only does it have The Hanging Gardens, the same city also has The Colossus. It is Top of the Top 5 Cities, population 5 and growing. My mission becomes clear: Find the Chinese and take Shanghai.
I lay orders to mobilize an invasion force (read: build chariots), but there's a problem. I'm stuck with triremes and don't know where to send them to go beyond my islands. Rather than bee-line for Navigation (tech advance is getting slow, besides I'm going for coin to mobilize an army) I decide to aim for something else.
Bribe some Barbarian sail.
By now I'm building up roads along my island and, you may recall, have been building my share of diplomats. I station a few diplomats around my main island, interspersed among my roads, and I wait for the inevitable -- a barbarian landing party.
Sure enough, it happens even sooner than I anticipated. Barbarians near Grenoble. My chariots spring at them and destroy the landing party, leader and all (thank God). Now the path is clear for my diplomat to quickly and quietly sneak his way to their ship and (on the same turn, before it disappears) lay his bribe. Without ever learning Navigation, and in the 1600s BC, I command my first sail.
My hope is that I can use the lone sail to find a trireme-accessible route to other lands (since triremes are more comfortable "leaping" if they know there is land). To that end I send the sail circumnavigating my lands, but at a few spaces from the coast. Sure enough, I find an island to the northwest of me, a trireme's leap away. And there are yellow cities.
Pretty soon, my triremes of chariots are unloading to meet the Egyptians. When they raze Memphis, I "discover" that the Egyptians are well ahead of me in tech, or at least they have a long list of 6-7 advances to choose from. I will take Monarchy, thank you very much. (I switch to Monarchy right away, in 1440 BC. The revolution to Monarchy goes better than my attempt a few centuries back for a Republic). Heliopolis is up next, a savory city of size 4, and with 3 chariots surrounding it I feel I have a good chance of a capture.
I have two non-veteran chariots around Heliopolis and one veteran. I have a "bad" feeling about my first attack so I choose a non-veteran to go first. It meets a phalanx and dies. Next my veteran is up, all my hopes are on you. The chariot (v) strikes and kills the phalanx, then strikes again and kills a lowly militia. The city, now size 2 and about to reduce down to size 1, is wide-open for my remaining chariot to occupy. Mathematics are kindly lifted.
I recoup my forces a bit and pretty soon descend upon Thebes. Wouldn't you know it? They want peace. They're offering me 50 gold for it. Well, should I take it? Nah, Death to the Egyptians! Wait -- oh -- Jesus. They're offering /all/ their gold and knowledge. All those advances I saw to choose from, offered now for mercy. It's irresistible, so peace is signed in 1280 B.C. with the Egyptians -- and no sooner the Foreign Minister's pen is dry, than Emperor Napoleon is gleefully cavorting with his Science Advisor over the spoils.
I'm even thinking of honoring my Peace with the Egyptians. But you won't believe it. As I come back from the Science Advisor screen and wipe the dust from my eyes, I notice there is a fortified Russian unit a couple spaces to the south of Thebes, and an Egyptian phalanx is locked up with it. The phalanx is what parleyed me. But Thebes itself is undefended. That's right, the golden border around the city of size 2, the Egyptian capital, hasn't got a line of black.
"Not even a peace treaty will save you if you don't defend your capitol", I rationalize to myself. A turn passes, the Egyptian phalanx is not recalled from its lock with the Russians, and Thebes is still undefended. Sorry, Egypt. That phalanx disbanded itself once my chariots rolled into Thebes, and in fact it was the end of the Egyptians altogether. Too bad they hadn't made another tech advance for me in the turn I spared them since the treaty.
With my conquer of the Egyptians I have made a beachhead on a new continent, and now have Thebes and Heliopolis to defend. It turns out the Russians on the south were just a landing party, so I make peace with them and then bribe their units -- thus avoiding risk and shoring up my defenses. Advancing into the continent, I meet the English. They are in possession of Oryx (meaning they took it from the Egyptians) and have put city walls around it. Rather than wage war against city walls, I decide to set up a perimeter with the English (I put chariots on a couple of hill squares) to keep them at bay while I continue exploring. The recent conquest of the Egyptians notwithstanding, I'm still looking for the Chinese and am still searching the open ocean with a single sail.
But not for long. With an embassy with the English (who are nonetheless at war with me), I notice they have navigation. That's all the motivation I need to send a couple diplomats via trireme into the heart of English territory. As I recall that didn't work out perfectly (the English have knights now, did I mention knights are aggressive?) BUT -- what's this? English settlers approaching my chariot outposts! I back my military units off to reassure those innocent English settlers. A few turns later I descend forward to find the English have founded York. I end up getting Navigation from the English.
The clock is now several hundred BC., and my Monarchy is expanding across the empty islands that I first discovered. Meanwhile I have located the Chinese to the far North of me. I even spot Shanghai from the coast. Ever true to my original plan, I build catapults now and sail.
It is about 60 BC when my armada arrives. From the coast, I unload catapults onto the forests and defensive squares around Shanghai: four catapults unloaded at once from the ships, and two more catapults at sea waiting to replace any losses. No city walls around Shanghai. I lose only one catapult in capturing the Hanging Gardens, for which I had lusted some 1500 years.
Despite my empire being more stable now and possessing +1 happiness in every city, I'm still too militarized to really think about switching to Republic. Having satisfied my previous overarching goal of capturing Shanghai, I decide that my new bent, for the next fifteen hundred years or so as it would turn out, would simply be commerce: to build good trade routes for all of my larger cities.
What can I say? When a city has three trade routes, each giving +3 or +4 trade, it brings a smile to my face. Longer-term, the extra trade will allow me a more fluid transition to Republic as well as allowing me to keep luxuries up, maybe 20%, to manage happiness in larger cities.
The Chinese want peace after I've captured Shanghai, and I explore their land with diplomats. Wouldn't you know it? It's too perfect. Peking, Canton, and Nanking fill out the rest of the Chinese island and they are all large cities which look like they are producing a lot of trade.
It will take time, but the world is now my stage. I'm keeping a militarized front with the English and bribing some of their NONE knight units, which I distribute back across my empire. I build a fleet of diplomats and invade the Russians to the west-southwest, but it turns out they have no tech for me. I finally explore the Indians' land on the far side of the world (and I'm mad at the Indians for sinking some of my ships), but they are too far out of the way to bother with. I notice the English have bottled up the Zulus. My civilization is the largest, but the English and Indians are doing well and keeping up the tech race. The Chinese empire is relatively small, but its cities are perfect for trading.
As I mentioned, the Chinese wanted peace after I captured Shanghai, and thus followed a few hundred years of easy trading with them. But then the Chinese decided, like most' the rest of the world, that they were angry at me and that they wanted Shanghai back. I tried to hold Shanghai, both on principle and to focus Chinese attention on their domestic concern, but they pressed me to buy military units to replace losses and sooner or later I realized I was spending too much on Shanghai. I made the decision to let it go and, I have to admit, a couple turns later I lost it.
With the Chinese mad at me it was no longer a simple matter of landing caravans on their coast. Their knights, without mercy, would blow them away. So I made the decision to re-militarize and force a beachhead, and in fact to build a fortress, within distance of all three major Chinese cities. I prepared. I sent five or six sails, each sail containing:
1 settler,
1 musketeer, (I had recently stolen gunpowder from the English), and
1 caravan
and I sent them to the coast of the island far north of me. I felt like Perry launching the Opening of Japan. I made landfall on the defensive squares, mainly forests, on the Chinese mainland. At each landing spot I ordered the settlers to build fortress. Musketeers, fortify. The caravans I had brought along could have made good trade routes; but with my anxiety so high and my anticipation so high that at least two or three of my four or five landing-fortification parties should succeed, I decided to use the caravans as decoys, or fodder. A road led to where one of my settlers was building a fortress: I put a caravan on the road to block any knights that might attack before my musketeers got a chance to fortify. It worked -- I lost a couple caravans, but my musketeers got the chance to fortify. The Chinese counter-assault was less than I had feared, and in the end four settlers succeeded all the way to completing fortresses, and then roads to link the fortress squares in with the mainland roads. With fortresses in place within a day's journey of three excellent trading cities, I now had beachheads for trade even in a state of war.
Over the centuries that passed, my empire gradually matured and the extra trade, from trade routes, was especially helpful. At 900 AD, typical trade values were +5 from Canton (a city of about 20), +5 from Peking (a city of ~15), and +3 from Nanking (a city of 9) (trade values prior to Railroad).
After building trade routes, it was all "downhill" from there I guess. The front with the English stayed interesting, and they even bribed one of my units out of its fortress once, but nothing I couldn't beat back. I traded cities with the English a couple times, whenever they advanced past me in tech. The Russians and Indians each tried to invade by sail or frigate, but I cut them off. From 1 AD to 1500 AD, I was all about trade. After that, with the development of Railroad, the task became industrialization. Railroading the land squares, the switch (at last) to Republican government, more banks, the building of factories, eventually power plants -- and eventually the space race. It was a long process of aggrandizement. Once I developed the nicer military tech, I patrolled the oceans with battleships and (for fun) harassed the enemy mainland with bombers. But, I never expanded beyond 25 cities or so, partly because I try to stay comfortably below the 128 unit max, and partly because I get bored managing more than a couple pages of cities.
Future tech came and I was still building power plants and manufacturing plants. (I swear, don't forget to build a power plant before a manufacturing plant.) But eventually I turned to space. I launched 30,000 colonists 1891, and they arrived at Alpha Centauri in 1904.
- - -
It seems my summary grew a little longer than I intended. Highlights of the game were bribing a barbarian sail to explore new continents, being tributed 5-6 technologies at once from the Egyptians, capturing the enemy city of my choice for an ancient wonder, and building fortress beachheads to make trade followed by industrialization. For being a bit rusty (recall my failed revolution to Republic), it was a fun game. (A couple screenshots attached). I also failed to mention just how many NONE units I ended up buying from the English to hold the peace at low cost back home.
So, that's my way of introducing myself to the forum. I have since started another game, but got burned out on it mid-through. I'm thinking I may turn it into an annual tradition though, of playing a good old civ game. Maybe next time I will play with greater restrictions, such as no manipulating the shield box, or maybe no diplomats, and let you know how it goes.
best regards to the forum,
Jarvis
I played a random map, emperor difficulty. I played straight-through without any use of save-reload (no re-rolling), and the only exploit I used was manipulating the shield box (e.g. buy-switching). While playing the game I did not intend to give a recount of it but I will share some highlights.
I started on a small island, about 20 tiles tall and ~8 tiles wide with some river in the middle, some plains up top, some hills southeast and arctic down south. I founded Paris at the mouth of the river and after producing a couple militia to quickly scout the island, once discovering I was alone on it, I concentrated on settling the island with settlers. I only ever built about 11 cities on my main island, about 2-3 spaces apart from each other (somewhat crowded), but had most of them built (at size 1-2 population) by 2000 BC. I was over-expanded in that once barbarians came and plundered two cities, but I rallied some forces to defeat the barbarians and re-founded the cities.
Being alone on my island I first decided to go for economic power and led my tech discoveries towards Republic. Civilization advances came fairly quickly in the beginning, I kept my rate usually >= 60% science and had a few cities working in the ocean, one even on gold, for trade. I was "content" with city sizes of about 2, at most 3.
I discovered Republic in 1800 BC (thank you replay data) and switched to it right away, but it was a mistake. The loss of martial law, and the fact that cities now had to work low-food (and zero-trade) squares in order to support military units, who were themselves now half-useless, made that clear. So after one turn of looking at city-screen results, I switched back to Anarchy and then Despotism again.
I had by now explored my coasts by trireme and located two adjacent islands, and explored them with diplomats, but they were empty. If I saw a hut near the coast I would enter it on my unit's first turn, then retreat to the ship if barbarians hopped out, but that's the only way I would open huts this early (I did make one lucky escape this way). I located the south pole and let a diplomat undertake the lowly task of circumnavigating it, but he would never spot land nor find so much as a hut. Meanwhile, unless I wanted to send triremes on "leap of faith" expeditions, I was locked out of exploring further, and still had not encountered any other civilizations.
My cities were in a bit of a quagmire. Growing slowly with few shield or trade to spare. After my "failed" revolution, I felt like I couldn't progress, and with the clock ticking, felt like I couldn't stand still. In hindsight it was basically impatience and just needed time for roads, irrigation, and mines to work their magic. But, not realizing this, I decided to go for Hanging Gardens (Hey, I like Hanging Gardens) to get over the hump. I would do it with caravans.
In 1720 I discovered Trade. Also in 1720, the Chinese built the Hanging Gardens.
Shanghai. Not only does it have The Hanging Gardens, the same city also has The Colossus. It is Top of the Top 5 Cities, population 5 and growing. My mission becomes clear: Find the Chinese and take Shanghai.
I lay orders to mobilize an invasion force (read: build chariots), but there's a problem. I'm stuck with triremes and don't know where to send them to go beyond my islands. Rather than bee-line for Navigation (tech advance is getting slow, besides I'm going for coin to mobilize an army) I decide to aim for something else.
Bribe some Barbarian sail.
By now I'm building up roads along my island and, you may recall, have been building my share of diplomats. I station a few diplomats around my main island, interspersed among my roads, and I wait for the inevitable -- a barbarian landing party.
Sure enough, it happens even sooner than I anticipated. Barbarians near Grenoble. My chariots spring at them and destroy the landing party, leader and all (thank God). Now the path is clear for my diplomat to quickly and quietly sneak his way to their ship and (on the same turn, before it disappears) lay his bribe. Without ever learning Navigation, and in the 1600s BC, I command my first sail.
My hope is that I can use the lone sail to find a trireme-accessible route to other lands (since triremes are more comfortable "leaping" if they know there is land). To that end I send the sail circumnavigating my lands, but at a few spaces from the coast. Sure enough, I find an island to the northwest of me, a trireme's leap away. And there are yellow cities.
Pretty soon, my triremes of chariots are unloading to meet the Egyptians. When they raze Memphis, I "discover" that the Egyptians are well ahead of me in tech, or at least they have a long list of 6-7 advances to choose from. I will take Monarchy, thank you very much. (I switch to Monarchy right away, in 1440 BC. The revolution to Monarchy goes better than my attempt a few centuries back for a Republic). Heliopolis is up next, a savory city of size 4, and with 3 chariots surrounding it I feel I have a good chance of a capture.
I have two non-veteran chariots around Heliopolis and one veteran. I have a "bad" feeling about my first attack so I choose a non-veteran to go first. It meets a phalanx and dies. Next my veteran is up, all my hopes are on you. The chariot (v) strikes and kills the phalanx, then strikes again and kills a lowly militia. The city, now size 2 and about to reduce down to size 1, is wide-open for my remaining chariot to occupy. Mathematics are kindly lifted.
I recoup my forces a bit and pretty soon descend upon Thebes. Wouldn't you know it? They want peace. They're offering me 50 gold for it. Well, should I take it? Nah, Death to the Egyptians! Wait -- oh -- Jesus. They're offering /all/ their gold and knowledge. All those advances I saw to choose from, offered now for mercy. It's irresistible, so peace is signed in 1280 B.C. with the Egyptians -- and no sooner the Foreign Minister's pen is dry, than Emperor Napoleon is gleefully cavorting with his Science Advisor over the spoils.
I'm even thinking of honoring my Peace with the Egyptians. But you won't believe it. As I come back from the Science Advisor screen and wipe the dust from my eyes, I notice there is a fortified Russian unit a couple spaces to the south of Thebes, and an Egyptian phalanx is locked up with it. The phalanx is what parleyed me. But Thebes itself is undefended. That's right, the golden border around the city of size 2, the Egyptian capital, hasn't got a line of black.
"Not even a peace treaty will save you if you don't defend your capitol", I rationalize to myself. A turn passes, the Egyptian phalanx is not recalled from its lock with the Russians, and Thebes is still undefended. Sorry, Egypt. That phalanx disbanded itself once my chariots rolled into Thebes, and in fact it was the end of the Egyptians altogether. Too bad they hadn't made another tech advance for me in the turn I spared them since the treaty.
With my conquer of the Egyptians I have made a beachhead on a new continent, and now have Thebes and Heliopolis to defend. It turns out the Russians on the south were just a landing party, so I make peace with them and then bribe their units -- thus avoiding risk and shoring up my defenses. Advancing into the continent, I meet the English. They are in possession of Oryx (meaning they took it from the Egyptians) and have put city walls around it. Rather than wage war against city walls, I decide to set up a perimeter with the English (I put chariots on a couple of hill squares) to keep them at bay while I continue exploring. The recent conquest of the Egyptians notwithstanding, I'm still looking for the Chinese and am still searching the open ocean with a single sail.
But not for long. With an embassy with the English (who are nonetheless at war with me), I notice they have navigation. That's all the motivation I need to send a couple diplomats via trireme into the heart of English territory. As I recall that didn't work out perfectly (the English have knights now, did I mention knights are aggressive?) BUT -- what's this? English settlers approaching my chariot outposts! I back my military units off to reassure those innocent English settlers. A few turns later I descend forward to find the English have founded York. I end up getting Navigation from the English.
The clock is now several hundred BC., and my Monarchy is expanding across the empty islands that I first discovered. Meanwhile I have located the Chinese to the far North of me. I even spot Shanghai from the coast. Ever true to my original plan, I build catapults now and sail.
It is about 60 BC when my armada arrives. From the coast, I unload catapults onto the forests and defensive squares around Shanghai: four catapults unloaded at once from the ships, and two more catapults at sea waiting to replace any losses. No city walls around Shanghai. I lose only one catapult in capturing the Hanging Gardens, for which I had lusted some 1500 years.
Despite my empire being more stable now and possessing +1 happiness in every city, I'm still too militarized to really think about switching to Republic. Having satisfied my previous overarching goal of capturing Shanghai, I decide that my new bent, for the next fifteen hundred years or so as it would turn out, would simply be commerce: to build good trade routes for all of my larger cities.
What can I say? When a city has three trade routes, each giving +3 or +4 trade, it brings a smile to my face. Longer-term, the extra trade will allow me a more fluid transition to Republic as well as allowing me to keep luxuries up, maybe 20%, to manage happiness in larger cities.
The Chinese want peace after I've captured Shanghai, and I explore their land with diplomats. Wouldn't you know it? It's too perfect. Peking, Canton, and Nanking fill out the rest of the Chinese island and they are all large cities which look like they are producing a lot of trade.
It will take time, but the world is now my stage. I'm keeping a militarized front with the English and bribing some of their NONE knight units, which I distribute back across my empire. I build a fleet of diplomats and invade the Russians to the west-southwest, but it turns out they have no tech for me. I finally explore the Indians' land on the far side of the world (and I'm mad at the Indians for sinking some of my ships), but they are too far out of the way to bother with. I notice the English have bottled up the Zulus. My civilization is the largest, but the English and Indians are doing well and keeping up the tech race. The Chinese empire is relatively small, but its cities are perfect for trading.
As I mentioned, the Chinese wanted peace after I captured Shanghai, and thus followed a few hundred years of easy trading with them. But then the Chinese decided, like most' the rest of the world, that they were angry at me and that they wanted Shanghai back. I tried to hold Shanghai, both on principle and to focus Chinese attention on their domestic concern, but they pressed me to buy military units to replace losses and sooner or later I realized I was spending too much on Shanghai. I made the decision to let it go and, I have to admit, a couple turns later I lost it.
With the Chinese mad at me it was no longer a simple matter of landing caravans on their coast. Their knights, without mercy, would blow them away. So I made the decision to re-militarize and force a beachhead, and in fact to build a fortress, within distance of all three major Chinese cities. I prepared. I sent five or six sails, each sail containing:
1 settler,
1 musketeer, (I had recently stolen gunpowder from the English), and
1 caravan
and I sent them to the coast of the island far north of me. I felt like Perry launching the Opening of Japan. I made landfall on the defensive squares, mainly forests, on the Chinese mainland. At each landing spot I ordered the settlers to build fortress. Musketeers, fortify. The caravans I had brought along could have made good trade routes; but with my anxiety so high and my anticipation so high that at least two or three of my four or five landing-fortification parties should succeed, I decided to use the caravans as decoys, or fodder. A road led to where one of my settlers was building a fortress: I put a caravan on the road to block any knights that might attack before my musketeers got a chance to fortify. It worked -- I lost a couple caravans, but my musketeers got the chance to fortify. The Chinese counter-assault was less than I had feared, and in the end four settlers succeeded all the way to completing fortresses, and then roads to link the fortress squares in with the mainland roads. With fortresses in place within a day's journey of three excellent trading cities, I now had beachheads for trade even in a state of war.
Over the centuries that passed, my empire gradually matured and the extra trade, from trade routes, was especially helpful. At 900 AD, typical trade values were +5 from Canton (a city of about 20), +5 from Peking (a city of ~15), and +3 from Nanking (a city of 9) (trade values prior to Railroad).
After building trade routes, it was all "downhill" from there I guess. The front with the English stayed interesting, and they even bribed one of my units out of its fortress once, but nothing I couldn't beat back. I traded cities with the English a couple times, whenever they advanced past me in tech. The Russians and Indians each tried to invade by sail or frigate, but I cut them off. From 1 AD to 1500 AD, I was all about trade. After that, with the development of Railroad, the task became industrialization. Railroading the land squares, the switch (at last) to Republican government, more banks, the building of factories, eventually power plants -- and eventually the space race. It was a long process of aggrandizement. Once I developed the nicer military tech, I patrolled the oceans with battleships and (for fun) harassed the enemy mainland with bombers. But, I never expanded beyond 25 cities or so, partly because I try to stay comfortably below the 128 unit max, and partly because I get bored managing more than a couple pages of cities.
Future tech came and I was still building power plants and manufacturing plants. (I swear, don't forget to build a power plant before a manufacturing plant.) But eventually I turned to space. I launched 30,000 colonists 1891, and they arrived at Alpha Centauri in 1904.
- - -
It seems my summary grew a little longer than I intended. Highlights of the game were bribing a barbarian sail to explore new continents, being tributed 5-6 technologies at once from the Egyptians, capturing the enemy city of my choice for an ancient wonder, and building fortress beachheads to make trade followed by industrialization. For being a bit rusty (recall my failed revolution to Republic), it was a fun game. (A couple screenshots attached). I also failed to mention just how many NONE units I ended up buying from the English to hold the peace at low cost back home.
So, that's my way of introducing myself to the forum. I have since started another game, but got burned out on it mid-through. I'm thinking I may turn it into an annual tradition though, of playing a good old civ game. Maybe next time I will play with greater restrictions, such as no manipulating the shield box, or maybe no diplomats, and let you know how it goes.
best regards to the forum,
Jarvis
