I am tempted to write about the loot I have gotten recently, but then I remembered a post by a blogger a couple of weeks ago asking more anime bloggers to blog about games or something like that. Since I play games almost as much as I watch/read anime/manga, I thought writing this post would be a good idea. It would probably be a better idea if I weren’t at college right now and I had more time to play games.

I think I’ll start with the game I probably play the most, Civilization IV. I’m sure I won’t have to explain the game to most of you guys, given it’s apparenty popularity. I’ve had the game for a while, but it would always lag at later points of the game due to the amount of material on the map. Thankfully, my new laptop actually has a GOOD video card, so I get to play this game at 1920x1200 resolution. I must tell you this now: if you are no fan of Civilization, I wouldn’t advise you to read this post.

For my first game on my laptop, I chose to use my usual settings. I decided that the map should be Continents. I’m more used to playing archipelago, but I wanted to try something different for once. I either set the map to be large or the usual, huge. I set up about nine opponents, all with the difficulty ‘Noble.’ The game speed was set to Marathon, my favorite since it makes the game very, very long (I think I’ve had a game that ended at about 17 hours of play.) I enabled permanent alliances, but I don’t think I changed any other settings. I decided to leave my pick for the civilization up to the computer.

The Mongolian Empire circa 1362. Puny compared to its bigger neighbors. The violent Chinese Empire borders it to the northeast while the peaceful Indians border it ot the

It ends up I got Genghis Kahn and the Mongols. I would have preferred a civilization that lent it self to a more peaceful lifestyle, but that choice would help me later in the game. When I play Civ IV, I usually like to stay nice and peaceful. I could usually produce enough culture to take over cities without fighting. Therefore, my military in any game I play is usually weaksauce. That hurt me once when I played an online game and a certain player decided to chariot rush me. Anyway, I was put in an excellent spot at the beginning of the game, right next to a rather long river, good for getting your cities connected, and near the sea. The one thing I hate about Marathon is how slowly the game starts. It feels like it takes forever just to research the first couple of techs so you can start working on improvements. And even when you do research, you still have to build the workers which seem to take forever and stall the progress of the capital city. Thankfully, it picks up in later eras.

At first, my game was going pretty well. Besides Isabelle, I was pretty much on top of everyone in terms of research and points. But for some reason, I couldn’t keep up with the other civilizations in terms of city-founding. And because of that, I started to fall behind in research. And thus leads us to the sad state of the Mongolian Empire.

In the mid 1300’s, my sad empire was confined to the spaces it had occupied since the start of the new calendar system. With other nations and a sea bordering it on each side, it had no choice but to halt its expansion while the powerful Spanish Empire, headed by Isabelle, and the yet unknown English Empire, headed by Victoria, continued to prosper. The Mongols were continuously bullied to give up research to less respectful nations such as the French headed by Louis XIV who had much less points than it did, but a much beefier military.

The Empire did see a chance in the Aztec Empire. Of course, not with the empire itself, but the land that it was occupying. If only we had some type of excuse to invade without putting ourselves to risk. That chance presented itself when the Aztecs and the Indians went to war. Of course, we were no friends of the Indians, but they had a lot of research that they were not willing to share becasue they “just don’t like me enough.” I sought to amend that by declaring war on the poor Aztecs.

The vast lands of the Aztec Empire. Perfect for expansion.

The initial conflicts of the war did not go as planned. A few years prior, I had a minor war with my Chinese, head by Mao, who I had accidentally decided to stop trading with. Although I was able to steal a single province from them, it left my army quite weakened and catapult deficient. The Aztecs made many attempts to get the war over with quickly by invading The Empire’s bordering cities. Most of these attempts were thwarted, but they did manage to get one of my distant colonies that was stuck between Spanish, Aztec, and Malinese territory.

My first initiative was to work on defending my cities on my left border. I decided to use primarily Pikemen, to deal with their cavalry, and Longbowmen, since they had good city defense. I was essentially just stalling so I could finish researching Guilds, which would allow me to recruit the most powerful pre-gunpowder unit, the Knight. Once I finished Guilds, I gathered every spare unit I had, which was only about a couple of Pikemen, added some catapults and Knights, and went on an almost non-stop city-conquering rampage towards their capital. The Aztecs were unfortunately unable to keep up with my technology and were unable to produce units that could properly compete with my Knights and Macemen until I had conquered most of their cities. Although the Spanish got invovled with the war, they only managed to attack the Aztec capital once and were unable to conquer it. They left the defenses very weakened, which was a perfect opportunity for my soldiers. I was able to conquer the Aztec Empire in a relatively short time.

The conquest of the last two cities was a bit delayed, however. Near the end of the war, the Chinese decided to use the opportunity to get their revenge on my empire. They quickly conquered two of my cities, one which I took from them in the prior war, and set a course for some of my oldest. Most of my soldiers were away in the far away land of the Aztecs, so I was barely able to stall them to produce more units. They decided to knock off my only link to horses, which crippled my ability to produce Knights. My defense focused on making Pikemen to counter their many Knights. In the end, since the war against the Chinese was going horribly, I was forced to sue for peace with only being able to acquire one of my lost cities while giving the Chinese the Printing Press technology. I can tell that I will have to deal with my neighbor of two sides again in the future.

The Empire has improved since the complete takeover of the Aztecs. We are now producing much more research than we were before. Plus, we have more points now, although the Malinese, Chinese, British, Romans, and the Spanish still have more. Plus, the British and the Romans are in a different continent, so they’re really a non-factor so far. After a few trades in technology, we are now on-par with the Spanish, and a bit behind the Indians, technologically-wise.