A Morality Tale...

[Unholy Cow]

Sorry guys, no complex story, just a quick reminder that its necessary to help your friends once in a while...

I haven't played Civ3 for a while, but this particular game I remember quite clearly. It was a world map, on some lowly difficulty that was a testament to my lack of Civ skills

Anyway, things were going swimmingly for me (France). I had conquered the Vikings early and as such controlled North America. The English, based in South America, were a pain in the neck throughout the whole game, but they played no part in the events that sealed my game...

The Persians had slaughtered everyone else to become masters of Europe. The Hittites had done the same in East Asia. Inevitably, these two empires would butt heads...and so they did, but not before forming two rival alliances (with defensive pacts) France-Hittites vs. Persia-Babylon. As mentioned before England, and also Rome who took up Australia, played no part in the conflict. The famed 'land war in Asia' was on...

I thought that starting the war between the two giants of Eurasia would be a good excuse to invade the weak and backward Hammurabi and take his African lands for myself. This I did, and I profited quite nicely. Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention to what was going on between the Hittites and the Persians. If I had, I would have noticed that Mursilus was losing sooner...

As it happened, my intervention in the land war in Asia came far too late. Xerxes was dominating, and the Hittite cities were falling like dominoes. The end couldn't come too soon for poor Mursilus. As a result of this, Xerxes was now the proud owner of an absolutely enormous empire that stretched from Iberian to Kamchatka Peninsulae...

I was therefore screwed - I simply couldn't compete with Xerxes territorial advantage. All this would have been avoided had I not been so selfish and had tried to keep the status quo in Asia. That was a game full of forgettable moments, such as being beaten to Theory of Evolution by a turn by the...Romans?!?!?!

If I got any of the leaders' names wrong, I do apologise

 

[Quintillus]

So how did it end? Did you lose a Space Race or score? It seems like you could've gone for a Space Race, destroying your enemies' Apollo cities if necessary. Or even gone for fighting Persia - though perhaps it was wise to follow the old adge, "Never fight a land war in Asia."

But yes, one of the toughest things to do is maintain a balance of power. It's always the question of, do you intervene and maintain the balance yourself, or ignore the faraway imbalance and deal with a superpower later?

Of course, there's an obvious explanation for your lack of success in this Morality Tale - you are an Unholy Cow . Had you been a Holy Cow, I'm sure you would've succeeded.