This time around I've decided to take a new route. Instead of just conquering as many people as I can, I'm going to concentrate more on creating more settlers and settling in as much unclaimed land as I can. I figured that since there's more land separated by sea, making the continents smaller but larger in number, it'd be much more beneficial to go claim far away land as fast as I can. If I do this early enough, I'll be able to claim more land than any of the other civilizations because they're most likely still working on developing and advancing themselves, rather than settling more land. The only drawback to this strategy is that by increasing the amount of land I have in the beginning of the game, not only am I sacrificing my time to make other developments or advancements with my civilization, but I'm also risking possible anarchy with my cities as well as invasion by barbarians. I might not be able to create enough troops to occupy all the cities fast enough if there's any barbarian threat nearby. Furthermore, the cities wouldn't have troops to keep them from getting angry and stopping work. However, land is key in this game and with more of it means more opportunities to find new resources and make healthy happy cities. This is why I think this risk is well worth it.

So, there's a good chance that this strategy could backfire on me and make me totally regret ever doing it. If it doesn't work out for me, there's also a chance that my civilization won't be able to bounce back from it meaning the end of my game. Regardless, I'm going to take the chance because I'm really sick of the strategy of trying to win over as much land as I can from rival nations, which is what I've been doing up to this point. I've only started applying this strategy, however, so it could be a while more until I see the consequences or rewards of it. Hopefully things will work out for me and I won't beneft ever doing this. If not, and things DON'T work out for me, I'll have to start over and think of a new strategy of playing.

I finally finished my game with a diplomatic victory instead of the space race victory that I was aiming for. Even though I kind of wasted my time trying to win the space race, it really doesn't bother me at all because at the time I was just trying to finish the game as fast as I could so I could start another.

I started my next game in a totally different scenario than the last one. Unlike the ice age scenario, the one I'm playing now (the Earth scenario) there are several continents meaning less diffusion and more need for a better navy. I went with Rome as my civilization, mostly because they're special civilization advantages were very similar to the Incan's. I figured that since I was so successful in my last game with the Incans, I'd be better off with a civilization that was the next closest thing. As soon as I started, I noticed the differences between this game and my last game. In the ice age, the world was pretty much just one big land mass making there no need for much navy power or traveling across the ocean. Everyone and everything is on that one land mass. In the game I'm in now, however, the geography is much different. There's more than one continent with much more bodies of water in each. It's actually been pretty agravating. Ever since I started playing Civ, I've been used to being able to travel across miles and miles of land without the hassle of trying to cross large bodies of water or mountains. Now, I can't move 3 spaces without walking into some sort of obstacle. I'm slowly getting used to it now and there are some plus sides to it. First of all, because of the large amounts of fresh water sources in the continent, it makes for some very convenient healthy places to settle. There are also some areas that have so many mountains they seem practically cut off from the rest of the continent. This offers very good geopgraphic defense in case of war. A second plus, whether it has to do with the scenario or just my luck for starting off where I did, is that there are many natural resources such as iron, copper, dye, fish, wheat, and more that are all around my civilization. Whatever the reason is, my great location has given me a huge competitive advantage in advancing my empire and I took advantage of it quickly by settling cities in all areas where there were large amounts of resources. Already I've gotten a head start in copper and iron tools. I have swordsman, spearmen, and chariots when all the other civilizations are still creating warriors. Hopefully my jump-start pays off even more in the future allowing me to keep this huge competitive advantage.