I'm finally nearing the end of my game in Civ. In case I haven't mentioned it before, the reason why my game has been going on for so long is because I started my scenario in the ice age so that I'd have as much time as I needed to advance my civilization as much as I wanted, as well as accomplish any other tasks I wanted to in the process. As you can see from reading past blog posts, I managed to accomplish quite a bit and am now in the proccess of trying to win the space race. However, one thing I didn't realize all this time was the huge advantage I had at being a successful civilization during this age. For whatever reason it never occurred to how beneficial it was to conquer all the land that I did when it was all on the same continent, as opposed to the 7 different continents of the modern era. Practically every civilization was a neighbor and bordering me. But since that's not the case now, if I had played in a fairly recent time era I would have had to send settlers, workers, military units, and more to all new continents, some of which I might never have known about until many many years. In my game, there was the big continent I was on and the other little one that I started settlements in neighboring the Americans. Even though it was just one continent shortly separated by mine by a tiny gap of ocean, it really aggravated me when I had to send stuff over there. I can't even imagine how annoying it would be to have settlements on all 7 continents, not to mention how discouraging it would be to even want to expand. This brings to mind what Diamond talked about in Guns, Germs, and Steel about the disadvantages of being isolated from other civilizations. Since all of us were mostly on the same continent, diffusion was easy and happened quickly. However, with a geophraphical set-up like it is now, many different kinds of civilizations will miss out for quite a while and may not come into contact with an outside civilization until way later on in the game. This could greatly hurt any civilization that could have greatly benefitted from trade otherwise. Thinking about all this makes me wonder about how it'd be different to play Civ in a world with 7 continents and if I'd still be able to accomplish what I did in my first game. This presents a good possible scenario for my next game in Civ.

It's been a while since I played Civ so I was pretty rusty and it took me a little while to get the hang of everything again. I was pleasantly surprised to see I had a lot more land than I remembered. In fact, I've been expanding so much establishing so many settlements that it's getting out of hand with all the building I have to do with all of them. Each turn there are about 10 cities that have completed their most recent building and need to be assigned another one to build. I've also started to settle in a whole new continent where there's only one other civilization: America. Lucky for me there are a few sources of aluminum on this continent which I've already begun to take advantage of because it's what I need if I'm going to win the space race. Just by looking at my overall score in the game so far and how much land I've obtained, I probably won't have to win the space race at all to win the game. Looking at my victory statues, I'm looking to win the game by domination (owning 39% of the worlds population and 64% of the land) and by time (having the highest score). Currently I own 59% of the land but that will soon change since I am now on the American continent.

At this point of Civ, the game has been going really slow. I've improved every single tile of land on my main continent and connected each improvement with all the cities so my workers are basically worthless and don't have anything to do now. The only thing that there is to do anymore is keep improving the land I just acquired from Japan (which is almost finished) and extending the borders of each of my new cities so I can aquire as many resources and land as I can. Aside from that, all the land in the game is pretty much owned by a civilization so there isn't much more expanding to be done, and I really really don't feel like going to war again. This late in the game it's pretty much pointless to start a war again and I have no need for any more land, I have enough trouble maintaining the land I have now as it is. All there is to do basically is to improve the land I haven't yet, maybe, if I get too bored, build the necessary units to launch a rocket into space, and wait until all the turns are up.

The whole war thing is getting really aggravating. All I wanted was a few patches of oil fields and there's none to be found in my land, so I have to go to war with a country that has some. It's very similar to what Diamond says in Chapter 5: History's Have and Have-Nots. But instead of having a competitive advantage of food production, Japan has a comptetive advantage in oil production. So instead of allowing this competitive advantage to happen, I had to take over the land with all the oil so that I would then have the competitive advantage. However it's been a lot harder than expected to do so. Japan is incredibly offensive and wants to take my civilization over just as much as I want theirs. I've captured about 3 cities, which are all I need to provide a sufficient amount of oil for myself, so I keep trying to end the war with Japan and be at peace. But Japan won't allow it so I'm probably in for a long war. They haven't made much advancement to my land, but have mostly been attacking my units defending the cities I've overtaken. It's been a back and forth struggle but I'm far more advanced with artillery and infantry units, and I've slowly been making advancement to the rest of their cities.

After this war ends whether by peace, defeat, or victory, I plan on having this be my last war. There's no need to gain any more land, I'm pretty sure I have almost every resource possible in the game. In addition, I've obtained an oil supply which is necessary for rocketry. My goal is to research rocketry and do whatever else is needed to send the first rocket ship to the moon. So I guess if for whatever reason going to war again is necessary to achieve this goal, I'm going to have to do it. I'm hoping that that's not the case and that from now on I can fully focus on reasearching and improving my civilization to the best of my ability.