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Did get to play much last night, because I was off in Chelmsford going to see my brand new, er, second cousin twice removed. Very cute baby; she fell asleep on me. Here’s a picture of her being grumpy with my wife.

Anyway, I did play some Civ Rev at lunchtime yesterday, then in bed last night before falling asleep. I’m the Mongols again. I love that barbarian villages join you as cities. It’s a great power. I never seem to have enough money to build roads until late in the game, but never mind.

The game started with an early war with the Greeks, but they asked for peace when I took their capital, Athens. Now they’re a happy little (single) city state nestled in the folds of my expanding empire. Then the Russians and Spanish both got annoyed with me and I went to war with, well, maybe both of them, though I’ve only fought the Spanish so far. I think I might be at war with Russia, too, but I get Catherine and Isabella mixed up when I click quickly through demands. The fight with Spain, though, has been going on for centuries. I’ve taken a few of their cities, but the Spanish are holding on well in the east. I don’t have money to build roads and my eastern cities aren’t very productive, so sending units to the front lines takes ages.

However, deep in the heart of my empire, scientific research is flourishing, so I may go for the technological victory again.

Also, here’s a tip that some players don’t seem to have worked out. I’m not very good at explaining things, but I’ll give it a go.

To move units a long way, you can click across the map. See the image there? There’s a confirmation asking whether that’s the destination you want to move to. If you want to move somewhere, say, to the south of that point, don’t click the tick or cross, just click on the map to the south. The destination marker will move to that point and the map will scroll so that it’s in the centre of the screen, so you can then click even further south. By “hopping” across the map like this, you can give units orders to move a long way and then leave them to it over multiple turns.

Did that make sense?

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.