Having written a post about my routines, it's time to follow up with a post about a specific instance in which that routine was broken. This time it was the Rocket Mobile Christmas Party. (I was going to call it the Annual Rocket Mobile Christmas Party, but that's just silly.) Actually, I think it was a Holiday party. Which is totally fine with me; we weren't celebrating the birth of Jesus during this party, so it would be disingenuous to call it a Christmas party.
Anyways.
I've been looking forward to it for a while; we got the invitations back in October so I knew a lot of thought was going into it. Casual conversations with other Rocket Mobilers (Mobilites? Mobilians?) revealed that previous parties had been a lot of fun. One interesting characteristic was that the attire was semi-formal. Fortunately for me, I'd stolen a nice sportcoat from my dad over Thanksgiving, so I wore that, some khakis, a gray dress shirt and my favorite blue tie. (Not to be confused with the other blue tie I own. Actually, the other tie I own.)
The party was at the California Cafe in Old Town Los Gatos. (Weird synchronicity: the comparable party at Cerner was for the "completion" of the 2004 project, and was held at Californos in Westport. Two companies, both California-related restaurants. Peculiar.) It's a very nice restaurant, maybe not five stars but certainly attractive and formal. This year we had a whole wing to ourselves close to the bar.
The first hour or so was just cocktails, hors d'oeuvres and conversation. I really enjoy settings like this; as I keep hammering home, I am a shy person, BUT I can extrovert myself in situations that are suited to it, and enjoy doing so. (Sure, liquor helps, but the same pattern has held since junior high for me.) In other words, if I'm at work it's hard for me to just wander into someone's cube and start talking about their weekend or whatever; at work I'm in working-mode and don't socialize well. But when I'm at a party I'm in socializing-mode and it feels natural to start asking people hypothetical questions and start drawing them out.
Significant others were invited to the soiree, and more than half the people brought along a wife or girlfriend. (We only have two female employees, one of whom did bring her boyfriend.) I was happy to see that the typical corporate thing didn't happen, where all the employees end up in one bunch and their spouses are left alone looking forlorn. It helped that some were coming for their third or fourth year; beyond that, though, this was a night that was about fun and not about work, and people made an effort to make sure everyone was introduced and included.
We sat down for the meal itself, a very delicious three-course affair. I sat down with Mike and his fiancee Judy and we had a great long conversation about the Bay area (he is a native and has never moved more than 15 miles), San Jose, SJSU (where they met), other companies we'd worked at, movies, and a bit of speculation about the table full of gift bags. Full up, we turned our attention to Wayne as he stood up to give his speech.
It was short and wonderful, a little emotional too, as he praised everyone for all their work. For those of you who don't know, our company wrote a large chunk of the software that is built into the new Motorola Razr V3, the first Razr for Verizon, which was just released two weeks ago. This is a huge accomplishment and a phenomenal step for our company, and even though I personally didn't write any of that code, it is directly responsible for me being at Rocket Mobile today. Anyways, he thanked us all and said "Every company I've worked at has its A-team, B-team and C-team. Rocket Mobile has more A-team players than I've ever seen before." We applauded him regularly throughout, and some of the more inebriated individuals added their voices to the accolades. We were getting some looks from the rest of the restaurant. I'm sure they were impressed.
The Person of the Year award was bestowed upon Young, who was well on his way towards winning an entirely different award for that night. Robert presented Wayne with a poster we had all signed of his "It's here!" email. And Wayne and Robert put on Santa hats and started handing out the gift bags.
It was a wonderful Holiday present. Ask me sometime and I'll show it to you.
The party broke up somewhat and the rest of the night people mingled between the tables. A lot of bonding took place. I regretfully took my leave later and headed out after thanking Wayne and everyone else.
At one point in the evening, I said, "Eric is a vengeful god who demands tribute!" For which I was told, "Chris, you're going to fit in well here."
Several incriminating photos were taken that night, but not by me. I'll try and track them down and then store them on the blog for safekeeping.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Friday, December 16, 2005
Toca's Miracle
"So, Chris, how do you spend your time?" What an excellent question, dear reader! I will be happy to illuminate you.
Like most people, my schedule breaks down into weekdays and weekends. The weekdays are fairly consistent from week to week, the weekend much less so - last weekend was the first in a month that I was actually in the state.
On a typical day my alarm will wake me up around 6. A while back I invested in one of those "progressive" alarm clocks, and it actually works pretty well - it starts quiet and gradually gets louder, giving me some time to wake up on my own before it reaches a typical alarm screech. So on some days I'm up and moving before 6, on others I'll hit snooze a few times, but it's generally in the ballpark of 6.
I get up and take a shower and eat breakfast, gradually waking up with each step. Dressing is easy now that I'm in a casual environment - I'll grab a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, throw on a long shirt if it's chilly outside, and I'm good to go. I'll amble out the door at various times, depending on how pokey I've been so far, but usually around 7.
My commute is wonderful - I never have bad traffic, and from my carport to the Rocket Mobile lot takes about 9 minutes, 5 of those on the freeway.
I'm generally the first or second person in the office; Cathy often beats me there. Working early is something I started while in the War Room at Cerner, and was practically a necessity there; the place got so noisy and distracting that I could only reach peak productivity in the few hours before the place filled up. Noise is much less a factor at RM, but I still like the calm and quiet of the office early in the morning. Depending on how busy I am I will sometimes take a half-hour or more to read the (online) paper and my email; other times I'll open Visual Studio immediately and get cracking.
Another nice change from Cerner is the dearth of meetings; I average just about two meetings a month now. So my workday is pretty much mine to manage however I want. Usually that means coding, coding, coding. This is occasionally interrupted, though, by:
* Lunch runs. A few times a week some of the guys will run to Whole Foods or a carryout place and grab food to bring back and eat. For special occasions (birthdays, etc.), we'll eat at a restaurant.
* On non-lunch-run days, I'll often eat the Kimchi noodles that are always stocked here (I never ate ramen and so my appetite for noodles appears boundless) or bring in a sandwich. The kitchen is well-stocked with chips, cookies, soda, and more awful stuff, so my lunch budget is practically nil.
* I'll sometimes track down someone to get clarification on a specification or bug report, or to brainstorm ideas for how to implement something.
* While we don't have a formal design phase, I'll sit down and spend some time with a notebook (solo) or whiteboard (collaborative) and figure out how to tackle a problem.
* When there's some spare time, I'll often try to better myself through KNOWLEDGE! I have a stack of CDJs (C/C++ Developer's Journal) to go through and programming resources to be found on the boundless Internet.
* Twice or so a day, I'll walk around the building outside and marvel at the good fortune that brought me to California. Lately I'll give a moment of silence to my brothers and sisters in Illinois who are no longer able to go outside without a jacket.
So that's that. Now, the specific things I work ON can change a lot, and obviously I can't talk about that here, but the general pattern of my days remains fairly similar.
On Thursdays, between two and six of us will show up at the Southern Kitchen. Everyone will order Eggs Benedict. It tastes really good, and that relaxed time is often a highlight of my week; it's the perfect opportunity to pick the brains of the folks who've been here for a while.
I start to wind down around 5; I'll typically finish whatever I'm currently working on and make sure everything compiles before shutting down. I'm usually out the door between 5:15 and 5:30.
The drive home is harder than the drive to work, though nowhere near as bad as almost anywhere else in the Bay area. It can take a little maneuvering to get into the right lane for the Hamilton exit, and I need to deal with more stoplights on the way home. (Now that they've stopped construction onto Southwest, though, my return commute can be just as quick as the morning one.)
I'll turn on NPR (now pretty much the only thing I listen to in my car) when I get home and start preparing supper. Since I live alone, this usually means I make one new thing every week and eat the leftovers the next five days. It's fine, though, and I try to add variety with the side dishes.
I'll either eat dinner at the gatefold table while reading something (often the New Yorker) or on the coffee table while watching last night's television (often The Daily Show or the Colbert Report.) The rest of the evening is mine and can go pretty much anywhere. Lately it's been pretty Civ IV-heavy; other activities include running errands, going for a walk (only in the summer, it's too dark now), reading (books, magazines, websites), watching TV or DVDs, DDR, going to the library, going to a lecture or performance, catching up with friends via email, AIM or this blog, cleaning the apartment, going to bed early. The fun never ends!
I usually shoot for hitting bed around 9:30, although "One... more... turn!" syndrome has lately been pushing that back. I'll read for half an hour (currently either the New Yorker or my re-reading of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" (trying not to fall asleep while reading this time though). I'm falling asleep really quickly now, which is a blessing; I still remember the agony of lying awake for hours desperately wishing for sleep that wouldn't come. These days I'll usually hear the train go by once and fall asleep before it comes again, which probably means it's taking me 15-30 minutes.
Weekends are another beast. Friday I'll often stay out later, either going to something downtown or just giving myself an extra-long run at a current game or book. Saturday I'll sleep in; I usually still have an alarm set but make sure I give myself no less than 8 hours. Most often I'll go for a hike on Saturday morning. I pick all my hikes out of "South Bay Trails," a good though occasionally infuriating resource. I've never done the same trail twice and will be able to continue for over a year before it becomes a necessity. My three big criteria are:
1. Variety. I don't like to hit the same park twice in a row, and will generally opt for a region I haven't been to lately.
2. Weather. The book gives good suggestions for when to hike certain areas; the Diablo Range has very few trees and gets incredibly hot in the summer, so I'm focusing on a lot of those trails now that the weather is cool.
3. Duration. The ideal hike for me is about 4 hours over varied and challenging terrain; I've gone as high as 6 and as low as 2 depending on my energy level and what else I have to do.
I'll usually return from my hike shortly after none and fairly hungry. This is a perfect time for a tuna melt sandwich. Twice now I've tried to stop by an In 'n Out burger on the way home, but haven't been able to locate it yet.
I sometimes nap in the afternoon, though less often than I'd think. Saturday is a great day for projects and ventures. All my personal coding gets done on Saturdays; I'm usually not up for it after a day at the office. I've gone up to San Francisco a few times on either Friday or Saturday, often intending to attend one particular event but inevitably discovering other diversions along the way. All my weeknight activities are fair game for this time as well.
If I didn't take a nap I'm usually sufficiently tired to go to bed around 10 on Saturday and go right to sleep. I'll wake up early on Sunday, often still grabbing 9 or so hours of sleep. The first thing I do is walk down the street to Albertson's, where I will buy myself a Sunday paper and a donut (and, if necessary, one or two items I've run out of). I return home and have my second big breakfast of the week - eggs, cereal, donut - while reading the paper. I hop in the shower and plan my day.
I've been church-hunting on Sunday, although I haven't gone since October (due to the afore-mentioned never being in town on the weekends, plus now everyone's doing Christmas stuff which makes it harder to evaluate them). I'll usually pick out a place the night before; I like to run searches on Google Maps for denominations ("Presbyterian churches near 95126") and look at their web sites until I find one that looks promising. The closest match so far is a great city church, but I'll probably expand my circle and keep looking. I hate being a "pick-and-choose' Christian, but at the same time I really want to find a home that's right for me.
I'm back a bit before noon and usually hunker down the rest of the day. Saturday is my activity day but Sunday tends to be my relaxation day. I'll go through the paper, watch some football games if it's on and I can get a signal, lay on my back on the couch and plow through a book. I'll usually call my parents now (free minutes on weekends!) and occasionally friends as well. My main goal on Sunday is to eliminate whatever residual stress may be left (less now than at any time since high school - I love my job and I love California) and get recharged and energetic for the following week.
So, now you know! This system has been working well for me, and I feel like it balances my work obligations, personal pleasures, and need for intermittent human contact. There are two possible changes in the near future. First, I may shift my schedule forward an hour or two. While I psychologically enjoy getting an early start on the day (and, incidentally, remaining in synch with many of my Midwest friends' schedules), physiologically I am still a night person. On the rare days when I sleep in and don't get into the office until 9, I feel more alert and awake throughout the day. So I might start doing that more regularly to take advantage of my body's preferences. The other big change is my commute; a few people here bike to work, and I think I might do it as well. There's a great multi-use trail that runs most of the way between my apartment and the office, and I'm very tempted to make use of it.
So, there you go. Nobody asked for this... again, a big purpose of this blog is for me to chronicle the stages of my life for myself. Ten years from now, when I'm juggling a career and raising kids, I'm going to wonder, "What on earth did I do with all my free time when I was 25?" I'll read this post, shrug, and say, "Apparently, not very much."
Like most people, my schedule breaks down into weekdays and weekends. The weekdays are fairly consistent from week to week, the weekend much less so - last weekend was the first in a month that I was actually in the state.
On a typical day my alarm will wake me up around 6. A while back I invested in one of those "progressive" alarm clocks, and it actually works pretty well - it starts quiet and gradually gets louder, giving me some time to wake up on my own before it reaches a typical alarm screech. So on some days I'm up and moving before 6, on others I'll hit snooze a few times, but it's generally in the ballpark of 6.
I get up and take a shower and eat breakfast, gradually waking up with each step. Dressing is easy now that I'm in a casual environment - I'll grab a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, throw on a long shirt if it's chilly outside, and I'm good to go. I'll amble out the door at various times, depending on how pokey I've been so far, but usually around 7.
My commute is wonderful - I never have bad traffic, and from my carport to the Rocket Mobile lot takes about 9 minutes, 5 of those on the freeway.
I'm generally the first or second person in the office; Cathy often beats me there. Working early is something I started while in the War Room at Cerner, and was practically a necessity there; the place got so noisy and distracting that I could only reach peak productivity in the few hours before the place filled up. Noise is much less a factor at RM, but I still like the calm and quiet of the office early in the morning. Depending on how busy I am I will sometimes take a half-hour or more to read the (online) paper and my email; other times I'll open Visual Studio immediately and get cracking.
Another nice change from Cerner is the dearth of meetings; I average just about two meetings a month now. So my workday is pretty much mine to manage however I want. Usually that means coding, coding, coding. This is occasionally interrupted, though, by:
* Lunch runs. A few times a week some of the guys will run to Whole Foods or a carryout place and grab food to bring back and eat. For special occasions (birthdays, etc.), we'll eat at a restaurant.
* On non-lunch-run days, I'll often eat the Kimchi noodles that are always stocked here (I never ate ramen and so my appetite for noodles appears boundless) or bring in a sandwich. The kitchen is well-stocked with chips, cookies, soda, and more awful stuff, so my lunch budget is practically nil.
* I'll sometimes track down someone to get clarification on a specification or bug report, or to brainstorm ideas for how to implement something.
* While we don't have a formal design phase, I'll sit down and spend some time with a notebook (solo) or whiteboard (collaborative) and figure out how to tackle a problem.
* When there's some spare time, I'll often try to better myself through KNOWLEDGE! I have a stack of CDJs (C/C++ Developer's Journal) to go through and programming resources to be found on the boundless Internet.
* Twice or so a day, I'll walk around the building outside and marvel at the good fortune that brought me to California. Lately I'll give a moment of silence to my brothers and sisters in Illinois who are no longer able to go outside without a jacket.
So that's that. Now, the specific things I work ON can change a lot, and obviously I can't talk about that here, but the general pattern of my days remains fairly similar.
On Thursdays, between two and six of us will show up at the Southern Kitchen. Everyone will order Eggs Benedict. It tastes really good, and that relaxed time is often a highlight of my week; it's the perfect opportunity to pick the brains of the folks who've been here for a while.
I start to wind down around 5; I'll typically finish whatever I'm currently working on and make sure everything compiles before shutting down. I'm usually out the door between 5:15 and 5:30.
The drive home is harder than the drive to work, though nowhere near as bad as almost anywhere else in the Bay area. It can take a little maneuvering to get into the right lane for the Hamilton exit, and I need to deal with more stoplights on the way home. (Now that they've stopped construction onto Southwest, though, my return commute can be just as quick as the morning one.)
I'll turn on NPR (now pretty much the only thing I listen to in my car) when I get home and start preparing supper. Since I live alone, this usually means I make one new thing every week and eat the leftovers the next five days. It's fine, though, and I try to add variety with the side dishes.
I'll either eat dinner at the gatefold table while reading something (often the New Yorker) or on the coffee table while watching last night's television (often The Daily Show or the Colbert Report.) The rest of the evening is mine and can go pretty much anywhere. Lately it's been pretty Civ IV-heavy; other activities include running errands, going for a walk (only in the summer, it's too dark now), reading (books, magazines, websites), watching TV or DVDs, DDR, going to the library, going to a lecture or performance, catching up with friends via email, AIM or this blog, cleaning the apartment, going to bed early. The fun never ends!
I usually shoot for hitting bed around 9:30, although "One... more... turn!" syndrome has lately been pushing that back. I'll read for half an hour (currently either the New Yorker or my re-reading of "Reading Lolita in Tehran" (trying not to fall asleep while reading this time though). I'm falling asleep really quickly now, which is a blessing; I still remember the agony of lying awake for hours desperately wishing for sleep that wouldn't come. These days I'll usually hear the train go by once and fall asleep before it comes again, which probably means it's taking me 15-30 minutes.
Weekends are another beast. Friday I'll often stay out later, either going to something downtown or just giving myself an extra-long run at a current game or book. Saturday I'll sleep in; I usually still have an alarm set but make sure I give myself no less than 8 hours. Most often I'll go for a hike on Saturday morning. I pick all my hikes out of "South Bay Trails," a good though occasionally infuriating resource. I've never done the same trail twice and will be able to continue for over a year before it becomes a necessity. My three big criteria are:
1. Variety. I don't like to hit the same park twice in a row, and will generally opt for a region I haven't been to lately.
2. Weather. The book gives good suggestions for when to hike certain areas; the Diablo Range has very few trees and gets incredibly hot in the summer, so I'm focusing on a lot of those trails now that the weather is cool.
3. Duration. The ideal hike for me is about 4 hours over varied and challenging terrain; I've gone as high as 6 and as low as 2 depending on my energy level and what else I have to do.
I'll usually return from my hike shortly after none and fairly hungry. This is a perfect time for a tuna melt sandwich. Twice now I've tried to stop by an In 'n Out burger on the way home, but haven't been able to locate it yet.
I sometimes nap in the afternoon, though less often than I'd think. Saturday is a great day for projects and ventures. All my personal coding gets done on Saturdays; I'm usually not up for it after a day at the office. I've gone up to San Francisco a few times on either Friday or Saturday, often intending to attend one particular event but inevitably discovering other diversions along the way. All my weeknight activities are fair game for this time as well.
If I didn't take a nap I'm usually sufficiently tired to go to bed around 10 on Saturday and go right to sleep. I'll wake up early on Sunday, often still grabbing 9 or so hours of sleep. The first thing I do is walk down the street to Albertson's, where I will buy myself a Sunday paper and a donut (and, if necessary, one or two items I've run out of). I return home and have my second big breakfast of the week - eggs, cereal, donut - while reading the paper. I hop in the shower and plan my day.
I've been church-hunting on Sunday, although I haven't gone since October (due to the afore-mentioned never being in town on the weekends, plus now everyone's doing Christmas stuff which makes it harder to evaluate them). I'll usually pick out a place the night before; I like to run searches on Google Maps for denominations ("Presbyterian churches near 95126") and look at their web sites until I find one that looks promising. The closest match so far is a great city church, but I'll probably expand my circle and keep looking. I hate being a "pick-and-choose' Christian, but at the same time I really want to find a home that's right for me.
I'm back a bit before noon and usually hunker down the rest of the day. Saturday is my activity day but Sunday tends to be my relaxation day. I'll go through the paper, watch some football games if it's on and I can get a signal, lay on my back on the couch and plow through a book. I'll usually call my parents now (free minutes on weekends!) and occasionally friends as well. My main goal on Sunday is to eliminate whatever residual stress may be left (less now than at any time since high school - I love my job and I love California) and get recharged and energetic for the following week.
So, now you know! This system has been working well for me, and I feel like it balances my work obligations, personal pleasures, and need for intermittent human contact. There are two possible changes in the near future. First, I may shift my schedule forward an hour or two. While I psychologically enjoy getting an early start on the day (and, incidentally, remaining in synch with many of my Midwest friends' schedules), physiologically I am still a night person. On the rare days when I sleep in and don't get into the office until 9, I feel more alert and awake throughout the day. So I might start doing that more regularly to take advantage of my body's preferences. The other big change is my commute; a few people here bike to work, and I think I might do it as well. There's a great multi-use trail that runs most of the way between my apartment and the office, and I'm very tempted to make use of it.
So, there you go. Nobody asked for this... again, a big purpose of this blog is for me to chronicle the stages of my life for myself. Ten years from now, when I'm juggling a career and raising kids, I'm going to wonder, "What on earth did I do with all my free time when I was 25?" I'll read this post, shrug, and say, "Apparently, not very much."
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
La Mordida
Earlier today Pat and I were chatting about combat in Civ IV. I was doing my patented backpedal, explaining that combat really wasn't as bad as I thought, that I LIKED seeing my tanks defeated by longbowmen, etc. Somewhere in there we started comparing II and IV, and he asked about how units affect happiness IV. I started to answer, then realized the explanation was long enough to merit its own post, so here it is.
For those unfortunates who never played Civ II or I, your military had a huge impact on your cities' happiness. Under authoritarian governments (Despotism, Monarchy, Communism), every unit you had stationed in a city would turn 1 unhappy citizen into a content one. Under representative governments (Republic and Democracy), the opposite was true: every unit you had which was outside a city (and thus presumably "at war") would cause citizens back home to become unhappy.
This had radical implications for the game, the most direct of which was that you wouldn't choose a representative government if you planned on going to war. Now, with some strategy you could gain a little breathing room - have each city produce one or two units, and construct some strategic wonders and improvements (United Nations, Shakespeare's Theater, police stations), and you could field a small army. Not enough to conquer the world, but hopefully enough to fight back if someone decided to invade. Any more and you needed to switch governments.
This distinction is largely gone in Civ IV. To explain how it works now, I need to first describe how happiness works.
In some ways, Civ IV seems more complicated than its predecessor; it has many new features like religion and promotions that players will need to tackle. However, in one way it is much simpler, and that is that the amount of micromanagement needed has greatly decreased. Happiness was an area that historically required a lot of time to manage; every turn in the late game, I would flip through each of my 30 or 40 cities to make sure they were adequately happy. Not happy enough and they would go into civil disorder, becoming completely useless and possibly toppling my entire government. Too happy and they were spending resources on entertainment that would be better funneled into production and trade. So I spent way too much time making sure the number of happy citizens exactly equaled the number of unhappy.
Civ IV works around this by changing the effects and cases of unhappiness. Most crucially, when your unhappy factors exceed the happy ones, it's only the excess unhappy ones who stop working. Suppose I have a city of size 10 with 10 happy and 12 unhappy factors. In Civ 2, that would mean 0 of the 10 would work; in IV, 2 would stop working and 8 would continue. This means that happiness continues to be an important factor, but is no longer as crucial as before; you can afford to let a city finish what it's doing before addressing it. They also cut down on micromanagement by eliminating the Entertainer specialist. In simple terms, this means that there are no longer short-term fixes for unhapiness; you'll need to tackle a more strategic problem (acquiring a luxurious resource, changing your civics, constructing certain buildings, etc.) instead of a tactical one (calculate how many people to turn into Entertainers).
The factors for unhappiness are also different. In II, every new citizen beyond a certain threshhold was automatically unhappy. In IV, population is one of the factors; larger cities generate unhappiness due to overcrowding, and will need to be met with offsetting happiness factors. There are other factors as well. People will become unhappy if the city is unprotected; if you are at war with a religion this city observes; if you have recently drafted people into the military; etc.
Another factor is "War Weariness." This is roughly analogous to the old Civ II system for unhappiness in representative governments, but is much less severe and more equitable. First, as the name implies, war weariness doesn't immediately kick in. In my war with Elizabeth, nobody was upset for a while; by the end, my largest cities had 2 or 3 unhappiness because of it. Again, because there are no longer home cities, these costs are spread evenly through your empire.
You can treat war weariness in a variety of ways. The simplest is to end the war. You can also build some buildings, noticeably Jails. And your civics can help as well; if you're planning on frequent, long wars, Police State is probably your best choice.
I much prefer this new system, for a variety of reasons. First, it is just more realistic. I like the way unhappiness gradually grows. Consider the United States' recent wars; when they were fought and quickly ended, there was no serious opposition. It is only when they stretch into several years without a clear end in sight that the citizens start getting restless. At the same time, other governments can maintain wars for far longer without serious opposition (consider the 10-year Iran-Iraq war). Secondly, it allows for more strategy. If you want to undergo a long war but will not be producing new units, you might consider a Police State/Free Speech/Organized Religion combo; on the other hand, if you are ramping up to war but are not actively fighting anyone, you'd be better served by Universal Suffrage/Nationalism/Theocracy. Or you can just shift into "Bread and Circuses" mode, funding lavish exhibitions in your Collosseums while your sons die in foreign lands. The point is, there's more strategy involved and it becomes feasible to wage war without necessarily giving up science.
That's a far longer explanation than was requested. Bottom line, happiness is very different from before, and it's possible to wage war without being paranoid about revolting citizens. These are good changes.
For those unfortunates who never played Civ II or I, your military had a huge impact on your cities' happiness. Under authoritarian governments (Despotism, Monarchy, Communism), every unit you had stationed in a city would turn 1 unhappy citizen into a content one. Under representative governments (Republic and Democracy), the opposite was true: every unit you had which was outside a city (and thus presumably "at war") would cause citizens back home to become unhappy.
This had radical implications for the game, the most direct of which was that you wouldn't choose a representative government if you planned on going to war. Now, with some strategy you could gain a little breathing room - have each city produce one or two units, and construct some strategic wonders and improvements (United Nations, Shakespeare's Theater, police stations), and you could field a small army. Not enough to conquer the world, but hopefully enough to fight back if someone decided to invade. Any more and you needed to switch governments.
This distinction is largely gone in Civ IV. To explain how it works now, I need to first describe how happiness works.
In some ways, Civ IV seems more complicated than its predecessor; it has many new features like religion and promotions that players will need to tackle. However, in one way it is much simpler, and that is that the amount of micromanagement needed has greatly decreased. Happiness was an area that historically required a lot of time to manage; every turn in the late game, I would flip through each of my 30 or 40 cities to make sure they were adequately happy. Not happy enough and they would go into civil disorder, becoming completely useless and possibly toppling my entire government. Too happy and they were spending resources on entertainment that would be better funneled into production and trade. So I spent way too much time making sure the number of happy citizens exactly equaled the number of unhappy.
Civ IV works around this by changing the effects and cases of unhappiness. Most crucially, when your unhappy factors exceed the happy ones, it's only the excess unhappy ones who stop working. Suppose I have a city of size 10 with 10 happy and 12 unhappy factors. In Civ 2, that would mean 0 of the 10 would work; in IV, 2 would stop working and 8 would continue. This means that happiness continues to be an important factor, but is no longer as crucial as before; you can afford to let a city finish what it's doing before addressing it. They also cut down on micromanagement by eliminating the Entertainer specialist. In simple terms, this means that there are no longer short-term fixes for unhapiness; you'll need to tackle a more strategic problem (acquiring a luxurious resource, changing your civics, constructing certain buildings, etc.) instead of a tactical one (calculate how many people to turn into Entertainers).
The factors for unhappiness are also different. In II, every new citizen beyond a certain threshhold was automatically unhappy. In IV, population is one of the factors; larger cities generate unhappiness due to overcrowding, and will need to be met with offsetting happiness factors. There are other factors as well. People will become unhappy if the city is unprotected; if you are at war with a religion this city observes; if you have recently drafted people into the military; etc.
Another factor is "War Weariness." This is roughly analogous to the old Civ II system for unhappiness in representative governments, but is much less severe and more equitable. First, as the name implies, war weariness doesn't immediately kick in. In my war with Elizabeth, nobody was upset for a while; by the end, my largest cities had 2 or 3 unhappiness because of it. Again, because there are no longer home cities, these costs are spread evenly through your empire.
You can treat war weariness in a variety of ways. The simplest is to end the war. You can also build some buildings, noticeably Jails. And your civics can help as well; if you're planning on frequent, long wars, Police State is probably your best choice.
I much prefer this new system, for a variety of reasons. First, it is just more realistic. I like the way unhappiness gradually grows. Consider the United States' recent wars; when they were fought and quickly ended, there was no serious opposition. It is only when they stretch into several years without a clear end in sight that the citizens start getting restless. At the same time, other governments can maintain wars for far longer without serious opposition (consider the 10-year Iran-Iraq war). Secondly, it allows for more strategy. If you want to undergo a long war but will not be producing new units, you might consider a Police State/Free Speech/Organized Religion combo; on the other hand, if you are ramping up to war but are not actively fighting anyone, you'd be better served by Universal Suffrage/Nationalism/Theocracy. Or you can just shift into "Bread and Circuses" mode, funding lavish exhibitions in your Collosseums while your sons die in foreign lands. The point is, there's more strategy involved and it becomes feasible to wage war without necessarily giving up science.
That's a far longer explanation than was requested. Bottom line, happiness is very different from before, and it's possible to wage war without being paranoid about revolting citizens. These are good changes.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
What Chris Did
Now, on to Civ!
I am loving my current game. This is my third attempt at playing Qin Shi Huang; I abandoned the first two after a few thousand frustrating years. I'm finally getting the hang of his attributes and capitalizing on it.
This game is also notable because it's the first time in Civ IV (remember, I've had the game for two months and have completed three full games and have a few abandoned ones) that I have deliberately started a war. I'm playing on a Normal Archipelago world. I do like archipelagos, but in this case, they sort of smooshed together and I ended on a vertical continent in between Mali and England. I made a few crucial changes in this game that I haven't done before. First, I did NOT sign Open Borders agreements when I could. Instead, I found chokepoints on my northern and southern borders and quickly built cities there. This kept them from moving into my territory (and them blaming ME for our "close borders"!) and, as a nice surprise, kept them separated. (Hey, hey, don't pay no mind...) To my surprise, even though they shared a continent they didn't establish contact until around 500 AD. I filled out the rest of my interior at a steady pace; my Financial attribute makes it a bit more cost-effective to build new cities (though not as well as Organized would), new cities would quickly build a Lighthouse and collect resources from the ocean, then switch to working cottages as they grew larger.
Once I filled in several thousand years later and started expanding to some nearby islands I finally signed open borders with them. Mali promptly plopped a city down on some crummy jungle squares in between two of my cities. Our relations quickly deteriorated. I had just acquired my unique unit, the Cho-Ko-Nuk, and started attacking with those and some Macemen. It turns out that Mali's Skirmishers are good defenders, plus his city was built on a hill. I reloaded, then had one of those moments: "Gee, what am I going to do with this army I have?" England beckoned. I swung south and, together with some Catapults and Horse Archers, began my assault on a surprised Elizabeth.
Combat is a lot of fun in Civ IV, once you get the hang of it. The biggest thing is just getting psychologically ready to lose units. To take a city, here's what you do:
1. Bring in catapults and barrage the defenses down to 0.
2. (Optional) Attack with the catapults or another unit that causes collateral damage. Your unit will die, but in the process you'll take down a lot of them.
3. On the same turn, attack en masse. You WILL lose some of your attackers. However, every one who dies will greatly decrease the health of any survivors. With overwhelming force, you will destroy the defenders.
4. Move everyone into the city. Have people fortify until healed.
5. If you have promotions, and are damaged, consider using it immediately to boost your health. Otherwise, wait until you see what you're up against and then take it opportunistically. (Take Cover if you'll be attacking archery units, etc.)
6. Move everyone to the nearest enemy city and repeat.
7. Have cities in your industrial base churning out new units to replace the ones you lost, and to defend the cities you're taking. You want the captured city to immediately build a Theater or something to keep it from revolting.
Basically, the aim is to get some of your units extremely high promotions, so that they will win any fight; the rest of the units become fodder, unless they survive, in which case they also become elite. Try and spread around the promotions to give a useful balance. You'll want one Medic, for example, so units can heal while in enemy territory. Always engage units in the field when you can beat them; even if it isn't a strategic gain for you, you're gaining immediate experience that will help you take the next city.
I came up with this strategy while experimenting on the English countryside. I came up short when I reached London - Elizabeth had just started building Longbowmen, and giving them City Garrison promotions. Combine that with the fact London was on a hill, and the losses were unacceptable. I left behind some horse archers to ravage the countryside and moved my main army down to Nottingham.
Oh, and another note: know your enemy. Elizabeth had no access to horses (which I knew because my horses showed as tradeable in the diplomacy window), so I didn't bother building any pikemen. I also felt fairly safe with my horseback archers since I knew none of her units could move more than 1 square in a turn (3 if roads were present).
While this was all going on, my research was advancing. Due to the cost of the war I was setting my science rate down further and further, finally flattening at 60%. Still, the bulk of my science was being produced by Beijing, which had 3 science specialists, an Academy, library, observatory, university, and a super-scientist. (It is currently building Oxford University.) So I was still advancing at a respectable pace. For once, though, I was actually pursuing military techs, instead of trading for them or giving them up altogether. While encircling Nottingham I discovered Gunpowder and, soon, Military Tradition.
Musketmen are overrated; sure, they can ignore fortifications, but they still need to contend with cultural defense, so you'll most likely need to bombard the city anyways. Their attack is barely stronger than Macemen, and they don't get any good inherent bonuses. Worse yet, they can't take the City Raider promotions.
Cavalry, though... ah, that's the ticket! Can you say 15 strength, double any pre-Gunpowder unit? Their ability to evade combat is also useful; give them two Flanking promotions and they can escape almost any harm, as well as gain immunity to First Strike.
Cavalry became my new city killers. The basic scenario remained the same - encamp, bombard, attack - but now I could often kill off a city without any casualties. Even if they had Pikemen, I could usually (barely) take it out with one Cavalry, and have the rest inflict their pain.
So where did the cavalry come from, you ask? A few were promoted from Horse Archers who had done enough combat to get good promotions. The rest, though, were churned out by Shanghai. In much the same way that Beijing is singlehandedly responsible for almost half my science, Shanghai is responsible for my entire offensive army. Early on it built the Heroic Epic, which allows it to build military units twice as quickly. I put a Barracks in there and started building my invasion force a while before the war began. Once I had Military Tradition, it built West Point which provided still more experience to new recruits. The result was that my cavalry were taking the field with both their Flanking promotions already in place. (It is currently building a Drydock as I contemplate bringing my travelling show overseas.)
This is one of the things Civ IV really gets right. Much as I loved Civ II, building a military was annoying because of the "home city" concept; to keep from getting killed by support costs, you had to spread military production throughout your whole empire. I like the "Specialization" mantra of Civ IV, where it makes perfect sense to pick one particular city and turn it into your death engine.
So, I had fun experimenting with new units as they became available. After taking all of Elizabeth's southern cities (Nottingham, Oxford, one or two others), I moved my army back north and laid London under siege in earnest. Even with my cavalry, those promoted Longbowmen on hills were tough, but the went down, and the city with it. To my surprise, I did not receive a "You have defeated the English!" message; I later discovered that they had escaped to some nearby islands. However, for my purpose the war was complete: I now fully controlled the southern two-thirds of my continent. I signed a peace treaty with Elizabeth to stave off encroaching war weariness, gave Shanghai time to build some useful non-military improvements, and began massive troop movements to my northern border.
In Civ games, I have a flair for the dramatic, and I decided to declare war on Mansa Masu once I established my communist government. A few turns before, though, I had a little chat with him. I offered him... I forget exactly what, perhaps Replaceable Parts, in return for Guilds, all of his gold, and his map. With a clear view of my targets, I started the revolution, upgraded my Macemen to Grenadiers, and waited.
As you probably already know, Civ IV uses an Alpha Centauri style "Civics" system. This means you can select a government system, economic system, etc., which allows for much better variety as well as better representation of real-world states (the United States, Germany and Venezuela are all democracies, but are radically different otherwise). My current system, which I'm very happy with for my current game, is Universal Suffrage/Free Speech/Serfdom/State Property/Free Religion. (Which, now that I think about it, isn't that different from Chavez's Venezuela.) The big difference between this and earlier games is substituting Serfdom for Emancipation and State Property for Free Trade. Serfdom combined with Steam Power (and, before that, Hagia Sophia) lets my workers work twice as fast, which is incredibly useful now that I'm repairing the English and Mali infrastructure. I like the free trade routes of Free Trade, but in my current game all my trade routes are pretty puny, with only my very largest cities having any worth more than 1. In contrast, even though my empire isn't all that widespread (1 continent, some surrounding islands, and a foothold on a nearby continent), I was paying a ton of maintenance. Before the revolution I was breaking even on income each turn; afterwards, I could jack my science all the way up to 80%, and I still have an average income of 40/turn. Yes! All hail the People's Glorious Revolution!
On the other points: Free Religion, as I've remarked elsewhere, makes it easier to get along with other civs. I founded Confucianism but wasn't good at spreading it or getting a shrine, so none of the other religious civics would do me much good anyways. Early in the game I had built the Pyramids and established Representation, which helped me grow some large cities and seize my science lead; Universal Suffrage is better for mature nations, though, because the hammers from towns add up to a lot. Free Speech helps my newly-conquered cities establish culture quickly.
Back to war:
Remember that one city Mansa Masu built in my empire? It was already on the verge of collapse (only 40% Mali), so I peeled off a small contingent (1 Grenadier, 1 Cho Ko Nuk, 1 Cavalry, 1 Catapult) to sit on their doorstep for a while. The rest moved north. He definitely wasn't expecting it, and his first city fell within three turns. Right after I invaded he switched to Theocracy and Vassalage, but despite having a Golden Age could not create new units quickly enough.
After taking the first city, my next priority was destroying a Pasture he had built on his one Horse resource. With that gone, he could no longer produce Knights, his strongest offensive unit. I proceeded further inland, following the same strategy as before. Even though Grenadiers cannot normally take City Raider promotions, if you upgrade Macemen they get to keep those promotions, which proved devastating. I didn't even bother to reduce each city's defenses all the way to 0 before I started launching in my grenades.
Due to my long period without open borders, I hadn't had a very good idea of what Mali's empire looked like. After getting his map I was surprised to see that he only had four cities on the continent, although he also had established a few island outposts. The second city I took, Timbuktu, was also the best defended. It seems that the AI tries to always put its highest-rated defenders in the capital. The third city I took was the Christian holy city, sadly without a shrine but a feather in my cap nonetheless. One more city down and I made my magnaminous peace offer, eternal friendship in exchange for a mere 10 gold. He bitterly took it and presumably retired to one of his watery outposts.
So, this is where we stand. It is nearly 1800, and dawn is breaking on the glorious Chinese empire. We are the largest and most advanced civilization in the world, bestriding its largest continent like a colossus, inspiring our free citizens to work ever harder and longer for us. Where do we go from here? I decided early on that I wanted to go for a Space Race victory, and the sensible thing would probably be to hunker down, further strengthen my industrial and financial base, and turn all my energies towards that pursuit. On the other hand, I have now had my first taste of bloodlust, and part of me really wants to see what it's like to carry on a full-fledged modern war.
I consulted with my military advisor, Bradley Schneider, on what to do. His advise was cogent and wise: "Give me more soldiers, noble leader, that they may sheathe their swords in the beating hearts of our enemies!" He's an old hand at this so it sounds worth a try. Roosevelt is my most likely opponent in a space race, so I will be preparing a surprise for him. Having just acquired my first source of oil, fighters and bombers will be joining the party.
This is slightly off topic, but I'm already thinking about what to do in my next game. I'd like to try playing as a religious civ. Up until now, I've never put much effort into spreading my religion; I can usually get people to convert early on, but by the end of the game only a few are following my religion. What I'd like to do next is focus on religious techs, gobble up as many as I can, and found a bunch of religions. Pick one of them and spread it all around, converting everyone I meet. If I can control the other religions (and they're hard to control, but I can make sure they don't spread as quickly as the chosen one), I stand a good shot at uniting most of the world under my faith. I anticipate falling behind in the tech race while I focus on spreading the faith, but hope that once I build my shrine the income will allow me to catch back up.
Enough rambling, sleep calls.
I am loving my current game. This is my third attempt at playing Qin Shi Huang; I abandoned the first two after a few thousand frustrating years. I'm finally getting the hang of his attributes and capitalizing on it.
This game is also notable because it's the first time in Civ IV (remember, I've had the game for two months and have completed three full games and have a few abandoned ones) that I have deliberately started a war. I'm playing on a Normal Archipelago world. I do like archipelagos, but in this case, they sort of smooshed together and I ended on a vertical continent in between Mali and England. I made a few crucial changes in this game that I haven't done before. First, I did NOT sign Open Borders agreements when I could. Instead, I found chokepoints on my northern and southern borders and quickly built cities there. This kept them from moving into my territory (and them blaming ME for our "close borders"!) and, as a nice surprise, kept them separated. (Hey, hey, don't pay no mind...) To my surprise, even though they shared a continent they didn't establish contact until around 500 AD. I filled out the rest of my interior at a steady pace; my Financial attribute makes it a bit more cost-effective to build new cities (though not as well as Organized would), new cities would quickly build a Lighthouse and collect resources from the ocean, then switch to working cottages as they grew larger.
Once I filled in several thousand years later and started expanding to some nearby islands I finally signed open borders with them. Mali promptly plopped a city down on some crummy jungle squares in between two of my cities. Our relations quickly deteriorated. I had just acquired my unique unit, the Cho-Ko-Nuk, and started attacking with those and some Macemen. It turns out that Mali's Skirmishers are good defenders, plus his city was built on a hill. I reloaded, then had one of those moments: "Gee, what am I going to do with this army I have?" England beckoned. I swung south and, together with some Catapults and Horse Archers, began my assault on a surprised Elizabeth.
Combat is a lot of fun in Civ IV, once you get the hang of it. The biggest thing is just getting psychologically ready to lose units. To take a city, here's what you do:
1. Bring in catapults and barrage the defenses down to 0.
2. (Optional) Attack with the catapults or another unit that causes collateral damage. Your unit will die, but in the process you'll take down a lot of them.
3. On the same turn, attack en masse. You WILL lose some of your attackers. However, every one who dies will greatly decrease the health of any survivors. With overwhelming force, you will destroy the defenders.
4. Move everyone into the city. Have people fortify until healed.
5. If you have promotions, and are damaged, consider using it immediately to boost your health. Otherwise, wait until you see what you're up against and then take it opportunistically. (Take Cover if you'll be attacking archery units, etc.)
6. Move everyone to the nearest enemy city and repeat.
7. Have cities in your industrial base churning out new units to replace the ones you lost, and to defend the cities you're taking. You want the captured city to immediately build a Theater or something to keep it from revolting.
Basically, the aim is to get some of your units extremely high promotions, so that they will win any fight; the rest of the units become fodder, unless they survive, in which case they also become elite. Try and spread around the promotions to give a useful balance. You'll want one Medic, for example, so units can heal while in enemy territory. Always engage units in the field when you can beat them; even if it isn't a strategic gain for you, you're gaining immediate experience that will help you take the next city.
I came up with this strategy while experimenting on the English countryside. I came up short when I reached London - Elizabeth had just started building Longbowmen, and giving them City Garrison promotions. Combine that with the fact London was on a hill, and the losses were unacceptable. I left behind some horse archers to ravage the countryside and moved my main army down to Nottingham.
Oh, and another note: know your enemy. Elizabeth had no access to horses (which I knew because my horses showed as tradeable in the diplomacy window), so I didn't bother building any pikemen. I also felt fairly safe with my horseback archers since I knew none of her units could move more than 1 square in a turn (3 if roads were present).
While this was all going on, my research was advancing. Due to the cost of the war I was setting my science rate down further and further, finally flattening at 60%. Still, the bulk of my science was being produced by Beijing, which had 3 science specialists, an Academy, library, observatory, university, and a super-scientist. (It is currently building Oxford University.) So I was still advancing at a respectable pace. For once, though, I was actually pursuing military techs, instead of trading for them or giving them up altogether. While encircling Nottingham I discovered Gunpowder and, soon, Military Tradition.
Musketmen are overrated; sure, they can ignore fortifications, but they still need to contend with cultural defense, so you'll most likely need to bombard the city anyways. Their attack is barely stronger than Macemen, and they don't get any good inherent bonuses. Worse yet, they can't take the City Raider promotions.
Cavalry, though... ah, that's the ticket! Can you say 15 strength, double any pre-Gunpowder unit? Their ability to evade combat is also useful; give them two Flanking promotions and they can escape almost any harm, as well as gain immunity to First Strike.
Cavalry became my new city killers. The basic scenario remained the same - encamp, bombard, attack - but now I could often kill off a city without any casualties. Even if they had Pikemen, I could usually (barely) take it out with one Cavalry, and have the rest inflict their pain.
So where did the cavalry come from, you ask? A few were promoted from Horse Archers who had done enough combat to get good promotions. The rest, though, were churned out by Shanghai. In much the same way that Beijing is singlehandedly responsible for almost half my science, Shanghai is responsible for my entire offensive army. Early on it built the Heroic Epic, which allows it to build military units twice as quickly. I put a Barracks in there and started building my invasion force a while before the war began. Once I had Military Tradition, it built West Point which provided still more experience to new recruits. The result was that my cavalry were taking the field with both their Flanking promotions already in place. (It is currently building a Drydock as I contemplate bringing my travelling show overseas.)
This is one of the things Civ IV really gets right. Much as I loved Civ II, building a military was annoying because of the "home city" concept; to keep from getting killed by support costs, you had to spread military production throughout your whole empire. I like the "Specialization" mantra of Civ IV, where it makes perfect sense to pick one particular city and turn it into your death engine.
So, I had fun experimenting with new units as they became available. After taking all of Elizabeth's southern cities (Nottingham, Oxford, one or two others), I moved my army back north and laid London under siege in earnest. Even with my cavalry, those promoted Longbowmen on hills were tough, but the went down, and the city with it. To my surprise, I did not receive a "You have defeated the English!" message; I later discovered that they had escaped to some nearby islands. However, for my purpose the war was complete: I now fully controlled the southern two-thirds of my continent. I signed a peace treaty with Elizabeth to stave off encroaching war weariness, gave Shanghai time to build some useful non-military improvements, and began massive troop movements to my northern border.
In Civ games, I have a flair for the dramatic, and I decided to declare war on Mansa Masu once I established my communist government. A few turns before, though, I had a little chat with him. I offered him... I forget exactly what, perhaps Replaceable Parts, in return for Guilds, all of his gold, and his map. With a clear view of my targets, I started the revolution, upgraded my Macemen to Grenadiers, and waited.
As you probably already know, Civ IV uses an Alpha Centauri style "Civics" system. This means you can select a government system, economic system, etc., which allows for much better variety as well as better representation of real-world states (the United States, Germany and Venezuela are all democracies, but are radically different otherwise). My current system, which I'm very happy with for my current game, is Universal Suffrage/Free Speech/Serfdom/State Property/Free Religion. (Which, now that I think about it, isn't that different from Chavez's Venezuela.) The big difference between this and earlier games is substituting Serfdom for Emancipation and State Property for Free Trade. Serfdom combined with Steam Power (and, before that, Hagia Sophia) lets my workers work twice as fast, which is incredibly useful now that I'm repairing the English and Mali infrastructure. I like the free trade routes of Free Trade, but in my current game all my trade routes are pretty puny, with only my very largest cities having any worth more than 1. In contrast, even though my empire isn't all that widespread (1 continent, some surrounding islands, and a foothold on a nearby continent), I was paying a ton of maintenance. Before the revolution I was breaking even on income each turn; afterwards, I could jack my science all the way up to 80%, and I still have an average income of 40/turn. Yes! All hail the People's Glorious Revolution!
On the other points: Free Religion, as I've remarked elsewhere, makes it easier to get along with other civs. I founded Confucianism but wasn't good at spreading it or getting a shrine, so none of the other religious civics would do me much good anyways. Early in the game I had built the Pyramids and established Representation, which helped me grow some large cities and seize my science lead; Universal Suffrage is better for mature nations, though, because the hammers from towns add up to a lot. Free Speech helps my newly-conquered cities establish culture quickly.
Back to war:
Remember that one city Mansa Masu built in my empire? It was already on the verge of collapse (only 40% Mali), so I peeled off a small contingent (1 Grenadier, 1 Cho Ko Nuk, 1 Cavalry, 1 Catapult) to sit on their doorstep for a while. The rest moved north. He definitely wasn't expecting it, and his first city fell within three turns. Right after I invaded he switched to Theocracy and Vassalage, but despite having a Golden Age could not create new units quickly enough.
After taking the first city, my next priority was destroying a Pasture he had built on his one Horse resource. With that gone, he could no longer produce Knights, his strongest offensive unit. I proceeded further inland, following the same strategy as before. Even though Grenadiers cannot normally take City Raider promotions, if you upgrade Macemen they get to keep those promotions, which proved devastating. I didn't even bother to reduce each city's defenses all the way to 0 before I started launching in my grenades.
Due to my long period without open borders, I hadn't had a very good idea of what Mali's empire looked like. After getting his map I was surprised to see that he only had four cities on the continent, although he also had established a few island outposts. The second city I took, Timbuktu, was also the best defended. It seems that the AI tries to always put its highest-rated defenders in the capital. The third city I took was the Christian holy city, sadly without a shrine but a feather in my cap nonetheless. One more city down and I made my magnaminous peace offer, eternal friendship in exchange for a mere 10 gold. He bitterly took it and presumably retired to one of his watery outposts.
So, this is where we stand. It is nearly 1800, and dawn is breaking on the glorious Chinese empire. We are the largest and most advanced civilization in the world, bestriding its largest continent like a colossus, inspiring our free citizens to work ever harder and longer for us. Where do we go from here? I decided early on that I wanted to go for a Space Race victory, and the sensible thing would probably be to hunker down, further strengthen my industrial and financial base, and turn all my energies towards that pursuit. On the other hand, I have now had my first taste of bloodlust, and part of me really wants to see what it's like to carry on a full-fledged modern war.
I consulted with my military advisor, Bradley Schneider, on what to do. His advise was cogent and wise: "Give me more soldiers, noble leader, that they may sheathe their swords in the beating hearts of our enemies!" He's an old hand at this so it sounds worth a try. Roosevelt is my most likely opponent in a space race, so I will be preparing a surprise for him. Having just acquired my first source of oil, fighters and bombers will be joining the party.
This is slightly off topic, but I'm already thinking about what to do in my next game. I'd like to try playing as a religious civ. Up until now, I've never put much effort into spreading my religion; I can usually get people to convert early on, but by the end of the game only a few are following my religion. What I'd like to do next is focus on religious techs, gobble up as many as I can, and found a bunch of religions. Pick one of them and spread it all around, converting everyone I meet. If I can control the other religions (and they're hard to control, but I can make sure they don't spread as quickly as the chosen one), I stand a good shot at uniting most of the world under my faith. I anticipate falling behind in the tech race while I focus on spreading the faith, but hope that once I build my shrine the income will allow me to catch back up.
Enough rambling, sleep calls.
What Kate Did
Thoughts on Lost. Every sentence in this post contains a spoiler.
I go through the same cycle everytime I see one of Kate's flashbacks. As it starts, I go, "Oooh, now I'll be able to find out whether she's really bad or not." As it gets moving I think, "Okay, I can see how circumstances would bring her here." By the end I think "Well, I guess I misjudged her. It would be nice if she was a villain, but she's just this mixed-up kid on the lam." Later that night, I sit bolt upright in bed and say, "Waitaminute! She BLEW UP her OWN FATHER because she didn't want to be related to him?!"
This is really just rationalizing on my part; I want so badly for her to be a vengeful angel of death that I naturally orient towards facts which support my theory. Still, I stand by my original premise: if she wasn't so cute and expressive, we viewers would find her far more disturbing and untrustworthy.
Oh, and while it's pretty soap-opera-ish, I am looking forward to the new world order of relationships. The Sawyer/Kate/Jack love triangle had done pretty much all it could. Sawyer/Kate has some promise (I'm holding out hope that they will morph into the "Bonnie and Clyde" of the island as Kate tempts him into a life of wild violence), but I'm really gearing up for Jack/Ana-Lucia pairing. The Jack/Locke division nicely teases out the conflict between reason and faith; the new relationship will hopefully do the same for order and passion. The behaviors which were lifesaving in the wilderness become liabilities within civilization, although A-L will argue that they are just as necessary here.
Sure, I know some people are annoyed by Ana Lucia. Some may even wish her bodily harm. By equating everyone with a metaphysical principle, I find it's easier to enjoy everyone on the island.
(In case you were wondering, Boone's metaphysical principle was annoyingness.)
Anyways. Mr. Eko is my favorite tail section person. Seaking of divisions, I'm wondering if his doctrine-based faith will conflict with Locke's experience-based faith. (Sounds like an oxymoron, but you know what I mean - Locke believes because of what he has experienced, he's like a prophet. Mr. Eko is more rooted and secure in his faith, but lacks some of the visceral connection Locke has.)
Predictions for January? I dunno. I hope we'll see another "Incident" in Sector 3, but I kind of doubt it. Charlie and/or Claire will finally remember more of what happened to them, and that will prove key to getting back Walt, who is not dead, but just using his freaky supernatural powers. (I still am not sure if that's really him at the computer or not.) And, uh, hilarity will ensue. The end.
I go through the same cycle everytime I see one of Kate's flashbacks. As it starts, I go, "Oooh, now I'll be able to find out whether she's really bad or not." As it gets moving I think, "Okay, I can see how circumstances would bring her here." By the end I think "Well, I guess I misjudged her. It would be nice if she was a villain, but she's just this mixed-up kid on the lam." Later that night, I sit bolt upright in bed and say, "Waitaminute! She BLEW UP her OWN FATHER because she didn't want to be related to him?!"
This is really just rationalizing on my part; I want so badly for her to be a vengeful angel of death that I naturally orient towards facts which support my theory. Still, I stand by my original premise: if she wasn't so cute and expressive, we viewers would find her far more disturbing and untrustworthy.
Oh, and while it's pretty soap-opera-ish, I am looking forward to the new world order of relationships. The Sawyer/Kate/Jack love triangle had done pretty much all it could. Sawyer/Kate has some promise (I'm holding out hope that they will morph into the "Bonnie and Clyde" of the island as Kate tempts him into a life of wild violence), but I'm really gearing up for Jack/Ana-Lucia pairing. The Jack/Locke division nicely teases out the conflict between reason and faith; the new relationship will hopefully do the same for order and passion. The behaviors which were lifesaving in the wilderness become liabilities within civilization, although A-L will argue that they are just as necessary here.
Sure, I know some people are annoyed by Ana Lucia. Some may even wish her bodily harm. By equating everyone with a metaphysical principle, I find it's easier to enjoy everyone on the island.
(In case you were wondering, Boone's metaphysical principle was annoyingness.)
Anyways. Mr. Eko is my favorite tail section person. Seaking of divisions, I'm wondering if his doctrine-based faith will conflict with Locke's experience-based faith. (Sounds like an oxymoron, but you know what I mean - Locke believes because of what he has experienced, he's like a prophet. Mr. Eko is more rooted and secure in his faith, but lacks some of the visceral connection Locke has.)
Predictions for January? I dunno. I hope we'll see another "Incident" in Sector 3, but I kind of doubt it. Charlie and/or Claire will finally remember more of what happened to them, and that will prove key to getting back Walt, who is not dead, but just using his freaky supernatural powers. (I still am not sure if that's really him at the computer or not.) And, uh, hilarity will ensue. The end.
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