Hell of a Game

Lemme set the mood:

I am constantly falling in and out of love with Civilization. I loved V and remain impressed by VI but Civ unlike any other piece of entertainment can absolutely wreck my day. There’s a feeling you get when you’re 4 hours into a game (about renaissance era) that you’re completely effed. Your army survived your protectorate war but was it worth blowing half your troops saving a city state that only nets you 17 gold? It wasn’t and now you can’t afford a settler to find oil and aluminum so you’re about to be shut out of the late game too. You put Civ down emotionally and intellectually defeated.

It sucks.

But then there’s the other side of the coin. When you out think and outplay everyone on earth. Civilization is the only game that can make me feel like an evil genius. Such a game was one I played last weekend with Gorgo. A military terror early on (love them hoplites) her greatest strength is her late game capacity for culture. Her theater squares become acropolises which can be built in half the time of everyone else. Thanks to one of the governors from the rise and fall expansion I can make it so I have a near monopoly of all great writers and artists.

This is how I can make pure diplomacy work. Usually when you make too many libraries and museums the less civil leaders tend to sniff around your weakest links and pounce out of nowhere. But if you can buy them off with a piece of literature or two and make them dependent on your spices and dyes you can come out on top with a profit. In this run I was trying to see how many alliances I could forge at one time. I managed to max them out, you can only have 5, and went on to have the most blissfully peaceful game of civilization I can remember. I was everybody's friend and if anyone picked on me or my buddies they were bombed into the stone age.

He shouldn't have laughed at me... he shouldn't have laughed!!!

I made a point to cross the sea before everyone else and cornered the market on aluminum. Which meant that I’m the only one with an air force worth a damn and since I’m everybody's “friend” no one thought to put up air defenses. The last kerfuffle with my cranky roman neighbor was as brief as it was hilarious.

Near the end the tension kind of went out of the game. I had built a massive empire over three continents making 700 gold a turn. Money was no object and I had everything lined up for a science victory. Two cities with two launchpads makes it so I’m 50-ish turns away. But then came the sabotage. My fair weather friends had been biding their time and making spies. Suddenly parking my own spies on launch pads and neighborhoods wasn’t enough to keep my victory projects from resetting and mini boss quality tanks (spy made partisans) from popping up in the middle of my capital.

If I was in any actual space race I would have lost… but the beauty of the culture victory is that I sometimes forget I’ve already got it made. Within 20 turns I was the tourist capital of the world and I posted my best score in Civ since 2014. Hell of a game. I don't get a whole lot of self respect out this hobby so when it does happen I need to document it!

Oh and does the gathering storm come out tomorrow? ...I hadn’t realized.