It's sad to think I brought such a defeat on the good name of General George Washington.

1 Feb 06

Have I mentioned yet that Game of the Year voting is now open on the News Section? It's on the upper right. Please make sure your vote is counted.

I thought today I'd report in on the Civilization IV massive pitboss game I'm playing in. I mentioned it a while back. Nobody likes a whiner, but I'm feeling a bit put upon. Apparently, I'm the only person who's been attacked thus far. I thought if I held him off for a short period, he'd realize he wasn't getting a cheap, easy city and move on. No, I've been besieged for the last 1000 years. Now I'm cranking out warriors to see if I can harass his homeland into giving me peace. I've offered peace several times, but he hasn't taken it.

I guess the thing I don't understand is unit maintenance costs. Later in the game, having an army like his would be draining the treasury. But not this early in the game. I guess the feeling of the design team was that the penalty of falling behind in production due to early military campaigns would be penalty enough. That's not much consolation when you're on the receiving end of seven warriors being supported out of a small city far away.

Unfortunately, my one early gamble didn't pay off. Instead of going for archery right away when war was declared, I tried for axemen. It would mean I could clear forest to pump up production as well as field a more powerful army of axemen. The problem is that copper isn't revealed until you complete the research. If there wasn't any in my radius, no axemen. Unfortunately for me there wasn't any. Now I'm playing catch up trying to get archery to boost my army.

He's had the units available to crush my city for a while. I think he's waiting for my city to grow enough to be captured rather than reduced to rubble. Too bad for him. I've stopped growth to increase production for my war machine.

Overall, I'm in pretty desperate straights. If I succeed in annoying him enough with my pillaging in his borders, he might still just crush me. If he doesn't go for peace soon, it will be costly to evict him from my lands if I can even do it. I'm pretty sure this early war is going to ruin both of us. In the short term, I concede he's out played me, but that's partially because I didn't take his initial threat seriously. It seemed to me at the time that a protracted early war would be madness so he wouldn't do it. I guessed wrong, and it's cost me. If I do recover and do well, it will be nothing short of amazing. Still it would be a great story to write up. Too bad dead civilizations tell no tales.

Jason