I've been playing for a few days now trying to build up my civilization as much as I can. I still can't figure out where I stand as a civilization though. According to the game I'm the most successful, but that doesn't tell me if I'm concentrating too much on military and expansion or concentrating too little on making my people as happy as possible. So far I've been trying to build up my military while keeping the happiness and health level of the civilization to the point where they're just happy and healthy enough to not cause any problems for me. I figure that this way I'd keep improving my army enough so that I can start to make my way towards taking over another civilization while not losing anything for it.

One thing that I've found myself doing consistently every time I play is at every chance I get, I get my workers to build farms to increase food production. Just like what Jared Diamond stresses in Chapter 4 of Guns, Germs, and Steele, in order for me to expand my civilization and support my new settlements, I needed more sources of food. "..geographic variation in whether, or when, the peoples of different continents become farmers and herders explains to a large extent their subsequent contrasting fates" (pg. 86, Diamond). The game doesn't totally follow this because geographic advantages/disadvantages don't really play a role in the game. There are areas that are close to water rich with marine life and others that are rich with fruit and spices, but for the most part it's all the same. Farms are farms and they all produce the same food at the same rate; they hold no advantages no matter what empire you choose. Regardless, I still haven't taken lightly the importance of having lots of food sources. Large food production means larger civilizations, which means a larger work force to work towards creating and researching more things. Recently I've been having a lot of trouble keeping my citizens happy and healthy with the amount of food I have. When this happens, they citizens aren't working and are consuming more food thereby hindering advancement a lot. Almost every settlement I have has been unhappy about starvation at one point or another and it's obviously cause I have too many settlements and not enough food sources . This is why, aside from farms, I've been setting up whaling boats, fishing boats, crab boats, and then plantations on goods like spices and banannas. All of which contribute to increasing my food production and civilization's overall health and happiness.

This time around playing I've learned a very important lesson first hand about food production and its role in advancing civilization, and from here on out I'm going to play accordingly. In the future I'm also going to be more conservative with expanding my empire because I feel it's much more important to focus on fully supporting the settlements I have now before I expand more and get in over my head. Geographic advantages or not, a settlement is of no use if people refuse to work or are starving.