iPhone

Finished off my game at lunchtime.

I did go for the technological victory in the end, but once I’d built and launched my spacecraft I had a few years until it reached Alpha Centauri.

Well, the Indians had been annoying me all game. I’d given them peace every time they asked, but during various wars they’d captured a couple of my outlying cities. I hadn’t been too bothered, but it still hurt, you know? (The fact that I’d stolen them from the Indians using culture in the first place isn’t the point – they were mine!)

If you look at the map, I’m the main empire filling most of the screen. The British are below me, the Egyptians are the yellow empire to the west and the Indians are up in the north-west. By this point in the game, they couldn’t attack me. They couldn’t get to me via land and my advanced ships were blocking the sea channel between us.

However, despite not doing anything about it, they were at war with me and every few turns they’d demand some technology in return for peace – demands that I refused.

So, once my spacecraft had launched, I didn’t have to worry any more, nor did I have any goals to work toward. It was time to make the Indians pay for being so very, very annoying. First off, I attempted to nuke Calcutta. Unfortunately, even though I was at war with the Indians, the stupid Congress refused to sanction my decision. So it was time to get rid of my democracy and become a republic. Once that was done, the nuke was launched and Calcutta disappeared from the map.

Then the waves of bombers went in. And then the ground troops. I was just advancing on one of the Indian cities when my spacecraft reached Alpha Centauri and the game ended. It was actually very annoying. I’d almost forgotten about it and was very much enjoying finally going after the Indians

Ah well, at least I won.

I love Civilization, always have. I’ve been playing it off and on for fifteen years or so.

This doesn’t mean I’m any good at it.

I’m not.

I never make any long term plans. I build whatever I feel like at the time, research technologies more or less at random (unless I actually have a clear goal in mind, which only happens if I start on a small island, or whatever), let cities decide which squares to use and generally just bumble about. My only real goal in any game is to try and get the borders of all my cities to touch so I can have a unified country.

I generally, therefore, play on the easy settings. I’m not above playing on the very easiest setting, just so I can do whatever I want without worrying. At the moment, though, I’m playing on one level above that, on Warlord. I’m Genghis Khan this time around, which means I should be running around on horseback kicking people in the teeth. (Historians: please check.) Instead the Romans have defended their cities like crazy, stopping my expansion and everybody but them keeps declaring war on me. I’m not in any danger – the odd enemy unit that wanders over to my little empire doesn’t live long – but I haven’t got the same free reign that I have on the easiest difficulty level.

I’ve pretty much decided not to bother going for a domination victory. I even switched to democracy, which means you can’t declare war on people. I’m leading the tech race at the moment, so I might go to space.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking back to the Civ game that I played on my last mobile phone, Civilization 3. That had no diplomacy, no naval units, not much of anything. (You can read a few brief impressions by clicking the “civilization” label at the bottom of this post and scrolling down.) That was rather what you expected from mobile games back then. Now, one phone later, we have this. Amazing.