No iron.

Playing under the rule of Hatshepsut in Egypt proved to be harder than I thought. I initially picked playing as them because I knew that if I played my cards right I would be able to take most of Africa and be relatively unopposed by anyone, save the barbarians. My problem arrose when I discovered that there was no close iron source to my starting location. I haven't been one to build many scouts, usually just one or two, and they usually die from barbarians or wild animals pretty quickly so I couldn't find an iron source close by. I did, however, decide to put men all around the perimeter of my lands so that I could preemptively stop barbarians and wild animals from getting in (this helps, alot! That way you don't have to worry as much about relocating men to defend mines or farms.)
Not having iron ready at hand threw off my entire game because I didn't have the advancements that other nations had. So I have a slower start and wind up behind in the tech race. I am doing okay, few runnins with iron clad barbarians but I managed to not lose any cities. Finally I find iron in South Africa. Thank god. I send down a settler, worker, and some arches and build a mine and poof, I am back in the game. But it wasn't as easy to catch up as I thought. All of the world wonders are being built or have already been built and I can't seem to produce men as fast as my neighbors. And again, rather than go with long bowmen I decided to utilize my new found iron supply and make macemen and spearmen. At this point in time I am second to the worst in rankings. Julius Ceasar decides to act upon this and in all of about 4 turns I have lost all my holdings in saudia Arabia to knights. Again, I didn't have enough and or strong enough units to repel and attack. I had 2-3 units in each of the three cities I had there. Then for whatever reason Fredrick decides that it would be a good idea to amass about 10 units next to one of my cities and just kinda hang out there. Wasn't to sure what that was about and I didn't stick around to find out.
While it is true that societies need to expand and get bigger in order to advance and stay prosperous, they can only get ahead if they have access to the necessary reasources to keep somewhat of balance of power. Without key resources such as metals and food surplus's they cannot compete against even smaller countries that have these advances.

Hard Time

I decide to start out as the Chinese, under the rule of Qin Shi Quang. From previous game play I have discovered that it is absolutely necessary to acquire an iron mine. Death by barbarians who have one unit of axe that plows through 4 units of clubers is enough to make anyone throw their computer against the wall. My capital was right next to an iron source and I immediately began pumping out axeman, spear men, and swordsmen. Ghengis Khan is above me and we make peace. 15 minutes into the game he declared war on me. As my first times playing as the Chinese I sort of expected to be attacked eventually by the Mongolians, but I wasn't expecting it to be that fast. A few thousand years before his time, Ghengis Khan still had the drive to take me over. My starting location was about the same location as the Jin Dynasty in China in about 1200. Way before his time I attempted to battle Ghengis Khan for control of my land with steel weapons backed by slave labor.
Anyway, I had already taken on an relatively expansionist role in this game and I had my warriors pretty stretched out. After warding off a few attacks I finally fell under the constant pressure applied by Khan. But I didn't stop there. I played again with the same parameters and this time I built fewer settlements, attained the iron mine, and began making axemen and spearmen. I waited and just like before Khan befriended me and then attacked me. I thought I was ready but then in comes a whole bunch of long bowmen from Khan's territory and I quickly learned the value of archers. I lost this game too. Frustrated, I decided to play as the Mongols in the next (but that is another post).
Back in the 13th Century BC Ghengis Khan set out to take over the Jin Dynasty first (as he did in both my games). The Jin Dynasty is in Northern China and was therefore the first nation to oppose him. The defeat of the Jin Dynasty only occurred because they did not attack when they had their first opportunity. Instead they waited and attempted to resolve their differences peacefully (sounds like a peace treaty to me, o wait, i had one of those too). Needless to say, once the Mongols were ready and positioned properly they slaughtered the Jin armies and sacked their capitol (present day Beijing).
For future game play I will be sure to make many, many units of archers and long bowmen. I need to find the right balance between cities and units. Waiting for a city to increase its influence in the surrounding areas can take too long and other empires can take resources that I want.

Columbus and Me

Alright, so it is about 1920 and nobody has yet to move to the "New World". I take the initiative and get two transports full of 4 total settlers, an infantry unit, and a Calvary rifle unit. After I get there there is no sign of barbarians/natives and I set up my settlements and have my armies chillin where they can easily get around to defend. I spot a barbarian settlement to the south, at about present day Rio de Janeiro. I upgrade my Calvary to a gunship and move it in to finish off and take the settlement. At this point in game play, I am under the impression that they will be nothing but barbarians with clubs and llamas, but that is not the case at all! They have 3 units of Grenadiers and they blew the !@#$ out of my gunship! And the they easily overtook the rest of my settlements (which had units building but were nowhere near completion). I lost all 4 of my settlements and my men. Hooray conquest.

So, in the real world Columbus was met with little Resistance and easily overtook the Americas with inaccurate weapons, but my conquest took place 500 years later and was apparently enough time for them to develop at the same rate as some of the lesser empires in the known world. Where as Columbus was met with little resistance I was met head on with technological advances I had not calculated on. I also over calculated my own strengths and therefore brought over fewer protection units than necessary. Now that I am prepared I know what to and what not to do for future conquests of the new world.

First Post

With the onset of game play it took me a little while to figure out what was going on but the tutorial was a great help. My intial strategy was and still is to be passive until I have expanded all over Africa (I am playing as the Egyptians). I chose to play as the Egyptians because of Diamonds statement on where many of the large beasts of burden reside. So I am a pacifist. For instance, Ghengis Khan will tell me to cancel trade agreements with India and I will refuse, but I will open up more trade agreements with Ghengis Khan. Whether or not this works I do not yet know. The largest problem I have faced in the game (aside from technical problems) was barbarians. I was solely focused on expanding my empire and didn't upgrade nor provide enough troops to patrol my land and I quickly learned that clubs verse steel will always result in clubs losing.
In terms of resources I trade with just about everyone to bring in mostly outside sources of food like dear and goat, but I also trade skills that I have upgraded. Like I said before I didn't build a lot of men so I focused on buildings and raising the culture of the people.
Diamond's book mostly predates all the happens of this game, but it is true that without the initial food surplus non of this game would be possible. Cities wouldn't grow and religion would form. There would be no warriors...and so on and so forth.

Pregaming

Okay, so I have begun some preliminary fucking around with the map and the units and build/research order, and I continually get error messages from windows telling me that an illegal action has been performed and that windows must shut down Civ IV. Ummm....I have lost like 2 hours of game play! Anybody else have temporarily map freezes in which the map breaks down to only fog of war and terrain (sometimes roads) and then 8 or 10 seconds later it resorts back to regular game play?

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! Posts will be documenting the similarities and differences between the economic history of the world according to Professor Diamond's book entitled Guns, Germs, and Steal, and the PC game Civilization IV. Enjoy my ranting...