Beware of the Little Guy

In my game, I was having a tough time growing territorially and economically because all of the land in my scenario had been settled. So, I had an idea. I decided to attack my neighbor who also happened to be the weakest and least successful empire up to that point. How hard could it be to conquer them? I couldn't have been more wrong. As soon as I declared war, I was shocked to see that they had a defensive pact with one of the strongest empires, who happened to border me on the other side. Now, I had to battle two empires; one to the north and one to the south. The southern empire that I was now at war with had military units that were very strong and almost equal to the strength of my army. The northern empire that I was at war with had very weak military units that were equal to those that were adaquate many years in the past, but they had lots of units and many extra advantages that are available with experience points. My tanks and armored units were struggling against longbowman and catapults. Even though they are much weaker than my units, every time I tried to attack them, I was at a distinct and large disadvantage. While this was happening, I just kept thinking about the U.S. attacking Iraq. The U.S. has the greatest military and technology in the world, but we are struggling tremendously against people using gorilla warfare tactics and modernly primitive weapons. This disadvantage is mostly because the Iraqis use their background and landscape to their advantage. They attack our units from much higher ground and by surprise. They use little rogue units that in a straight up fight would stand no chance, but due to their advantages, are able to be very successful. Even if they do not win that battle, they prolong the war which does more damage than just winning the battle, both economically and psychologically. So watch out. Just because your neighbor is weaker than you, they could cause you a lot of damage to not just your attacking units but to your empire as a whole.

Technology Plays Important Role

As the empires in the game become older and larger, what seperates the successful ones from the weaker ones? Obviously, wealth is a huge factor in this, but so is the strength of your military units. The common denominator between these two is technology. The more technologically advanced that your empire is, the stronger, richer and more successful it will become. Diamond talked about how technology played an important role in the transformation of hunter-gatherer societies into stable and growing villages. He references his example of the people of New Guinea a lot when talking about this point. They never developed the technology that other civilizations did and they still possess little technology today. Heilbroner also discusses how technology was a crucial means of growing and enhancing a society. He references the steam engine and Adam Smith's pin factory as examples of ways that technology sparked a growth in the civilization and allowed them to expand both economically and spatially. Colander states in his textbook's definition of the new growth theory that "technology is the primary source of growth." All 3 of our resources state in their own way that technology is vital to the growth of your village, city or country. So, in Civ, technology is probably pretty important as well.

Marginal Cost

In economics, we are always looking for the marginal cost in each one of our actions and decisions. Sometimes, it is easy. Sometimes the marginal cost is monetary and other times you have to delve a little deeper. In Civ, we are forced to look at this concept on a turn by turn basis. Each time that we decide which technology to discover, what our workers need to construct or which military unit to train, the marginal cost of this decision will have an impact on the rest of the game. Obviously, if you construct a lot of buildings and wonders, then your marginal cost is the deficiency of your military and vice versa. But, the more difficult marginal costs to consider are the workers and what they build in each given category. For instance, what is the marginal cost of building a longbowman in 4 turns instead of a rifleman in 13 turns? The rifleman is much stronger and is a better military unit but is this benefit worth the longbowman unit and an aqueduct that will keep the citizens of your city healthy whether fighting a war or not. How about the marginal cost of building a wonder that will give you added benefits over other smaller and less beneficial structures? Example: you have the opportunity to build Broadway, which provides you with 5 hit musicals, but it takes 24 turns. You could also build a university, observatory and a hospital in 26 turns. Which situation is most beneficial for your city and your civilization as a whole? Marginal cost is very important in real life and in Civ and much like in real life, it is often ignored.

Watch-Out

There will come a time in every civilization's life when they are faced with a tough decision: to go to war or not. I usually try to avoid conflict with other empires and playing passively throughout the time limit. Sometimes though, battles and conflict seem inevitable. Other empires were expanding at a faster rate than I was and I was losing land that was available for me to expand and settle on. So, as they were growing bigger and bigger, I was just trying to become more and more advance and force them to try to "keep up with the Joneses" scientifically and technologically. I was able to create spies with the construction of Scotland Yard in one of my cities and used them to collect information about the units of my neighboring empires. The empire to the north of me was Japanese. They were far behind in military technology and in the strength and numbers of their units. Because I could not expand elsewhere, going to war with the Japanese and expanding this way seemed like a logical and smart decision.
But when I declared when on Japan, a much stronger and advanced empire, the Russians, went to war with me on behalf of a defensive pact they signed with the Japanese. Now, I was in trouble. I was sandwiched between two countries that I was at war with. I was forced to watch not only my northern borders and units but my southern ones as well. I was able to move through the Japanese forces fairly quickly and have only one more city to go before I have defeated them, but I have only take 2 cities from the Russians who are defending their cities with much success. I am still fighting this battle and hopefully will be on the winning end of the outcome, but nonetheless I have learned an important lesson. Pay attention to who you go to war with and with who their friends are. I started out fighting the weakest empire in the game, but combined with one of the strongest empires, even they become a formidable opponent.

Personal Relations

How nice are you supposed to be to your neighbors? If you help build them up, they can protect you with defensive pacts and by weakening enemies before they get to your borders. But they also could grow as strong or stronger than you and can compete for territorial expansion, new trades and military prowess. At the beginning of each game, the playing characters are introduced to you. At this point, a decision must be made: war or peace. But this is only the beginning. Throughout the game, the other leaders initiate trade talks. How do you know when a trade is even or beneficial for you. And if one side has all of the resources while the other has very limited to trade with, will the trade even be helpful? When one side asks the other for a civility and give nothing in return, how do know whether to give it to them or not? These questions deal with the strategy of the game; one that is ever-changing and requires constant upkeep. The situations and decisions change from game to game, era to era and character to character.

Home-Field Advantage

Obviously, we all know that certain areas and civilizations possess more resources and technology than neighboring civilizations and areas, but what about the spacial and land availibility of certain areas. I was playing a scenario and I was Frederick leading a German Empire. At the beginning of the game, I was able to expand rather freely due to no neighboring and competing civilitions while civs that come into the game later and in between other empires are at an astounding disadvantage due to this fact. For example, in my little scenario, the weakest empires were the ones that entered the game later and were boxed in by other civs. These were the Romans and Alexander, Julias Caesar and the Greeks and Genghis Khan and the Mongolians. They were all blocked in by Cyrus, Hatsheput and myself. They were not able to expand and advance their empires, so I took them over as I looked to take advantage of these instances. My military was very advanced with tanks, marines and fighter jets while fighting against longbowman and other weaker warriors. This combined with the lack of natural resources and technology in those areas created much weaker empires than their neighbors.

First Try

After going through the tutorial, I started playing a scenario where I was the leader of Japan. My empire began by building 3 cities on Japans mainland. I began probably like most people by building a food surplus like Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel tells us to. Because these 3 cities are on an island, they advanced very quickly, because they were my only cities, and because I could research all of the agricultural advances I wanted to. I could do this because of my isolation from barbarians and other empires, who could not attack me without large advances in technology with ships. Once I was able to start producing these ships and stronger military units, I made a stupid change in my philosophy, although at the time, I didnt realize that I was doing it. I started creating mass amounts of military units but I played passively through the entire time frame. I never entered into a war or even battle with anyone besides Barbarians. But once I began expanding, I quickly saw the importance and efficiency of railroads between cities and resources. In these expanded cities and surrounding areas, I should have used more workers and produced them sooner than I did. I waited a while and it took a long time for the cities reap the rewards of the resources around it. Natural resources and how you use them to your advantage was another big part of Diamonds book. He argues that a civilization can only grow as large as the resources around them can support. In my empire, I was able to farm a lot of rice. So, I build granaries and created a large food surplus. Even though this was great, many areas were not able to be mined. In those areas, very few technological advances were made. They ended be populous cities but very primitive in a lot of their unit production. The one major resource I could mine, besides iron for railroads, was uranium. Not really Japans mainland but my surrounding areas were able to produce a lot of uranium. With the Manhattan Project, I could have produced nuclear weapons but ran out of time and turns. Another resource that was unavailable to me was oil. Even though I was one of the more advanced empires, at least my mainland cities were anyway, I could not produced anything that required oil, such as planes and fighter jets. Neighboring China, even though their cities were protected by bowman late in the 20th century, had fighter jets circling nearly every one of their cities because of their production of a lot of oil. I ended up winning a time victory during this scenario but made some large and stupid mistakes, so I think that if I play smarter I could do it again.