The first few hours of playing Civilization III was a very realistic experience that was true to the history of early human civilizations. The civilizations that were able to advance the fastest had both economic and military advantages over stagnant civilizations. Advancement required an ample food supply to promote population growth, a strong military to protect cities, efficient production methods, and a fairly large treasury to support the military and structures within the city. Achieving those prerequisites was not an easy task with limited resources, so the allocation of resources became the essential problem to figure out.
My initial strategy at the beginning of the game was to build a city with a strong military so that I could protect myself from "barbarians". I learned bronze working and iron working very early on, and also built a barracks so that my soldiers could heal themselves. My civilization fended off foe after foe with superior military strength, but my preoccupation with military advancements resulted in my civilization growing at a very slow rate compared to the other ones. I erected my first few towns in South America, a land rich with gold in the Andes Mountains. For that reason, funding my civilization was not much of a problem. Food, on the other hand, wasn't quite as plentiful so I created some workers to irrigate the land and produce more. According to Jared Diamond in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, farming is what allowed the earliest civilizations to advance ahead of hunter/gather societies because a larger food supply was needed to be able to support a large population. It also allowed for certain specialists to exist who could help advance the civilization by not having to focus on producing food for themselves. I took Diamond's food for thought and the result was indeed beneficial to my civilization's growth. The area in which I had huge problems, however, was the production of shields. Apparently I placed my towns in locations that didn't produce enough shields because I had a very hard time speeding up the production process. This resulted in not being able to advance as fast as other civilizations, and what I thought was a strong military ended up being very weak later on in the game. It took me awhile to figure out a good solution to the production problem, but in the end I learned that it was all about making the best trade-off decisions.
My first solution was to build new cities so that I would produce more shields, but the real problem was that I was losing about half of the shields my cities produced due to corruption. My next move was to try advancing enough to be able to learn about new forms of government that would experience less corruption. This effort was useless though because it was taking way too long to advance toward a new government without a lot of shields to speed up production. In this sense, my lack of shields was preventing me from being able to produce more. This concept is a very real economic issue in today’s world: those who have very little find it hard to get more, while getting more is much easier for those who already have a lot (the rich get richer while the poor get poorer). I finally had to make a trade-off in order to solve the production problem, and this consisted of reallocating my human resources to the places where they were needed the most: workers were moved to the locations with the most shields, which had a negative impact on the amount of food and money I was able to acquire. But this trade-off was very necessary to the development of my civilization.
Trade-offs have always been an economic reality, and choosing the less beneficial alternative can be devastating. Governments must choose what is best for their people, and this is especially crucial when everyday needs aren’t being met. I made a good economic decision to expand my shield production at the expense of food production and money because shields were scarce while the others were in surplus. I favored this command style economy which enabled me to position workers exactly where they were needed. The market-based economy where the workers chose where they wanted to work themselves was not satisfactory, so I took command. At the time it was really the only option I had that could solve the scarcity problem.
My initial strategy at the beginning of the game was to build a city with a strong military so that I could protect myself from "barbarians". I learned bronze working and iron working very early on, and also built a barracks so that my soldiers could heal themselves. My civilization fended off foe after foe with superior military strength, but my preoccupation with military advancements resulted in my civilization growing at a very slow rate compared to the other ones. I erected my first few towns in South America, a land rich with gold in the Andes Mountains. For that reason, funding my civilization was not much of a problem. Food, on the other hand, wasn't quite as plentiful so I created some workers to irrigate the land and produce more. According to Jared Diamond in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, farming is what allowed the earliest civilizations to advance ahead of hunter/gather societies because a larger food supply was needed to be able to support a large population. It also allowed for certain specialists to exist who could help advance the civilization by not having to focus on producing food for themselves. I took Diamond's food for thought and the result was indeed beneficial to my civilization's growth. The area in which I had huge problems, however, was the production of shields. Apparently I placed my towns in locations that didn't produce enough shields because I had a very hard time speeding up the production process. This resulted in not being able to advance as fast as other civilizations, and what I thought was a strong military ended up being very weak later on in the game. It took me awhile to figure out a good solution to the production problem, but in the end I learned that it was all about making the best trade-off decisions.
My first solution was to build new cities so that I would produce more shields, but the real problem was that I was losing about half of the shields my cities produced due to corruption. My next move was to try advancing enough to be able to learn about new forms of government that would experience less corruption. This effort was useless though because it was taking way too long to advance toward a new government without a lot of shields to speed up production. In this sense, my lack of shields was preventing me from being able to produce more. This concept is a very real economic issue in today’s world: those who have very little find it hard to get more, while getting more is much easier for those who already have a lot (the rich get richer while the poor get poorer). I finally had to make a trade-off in order to solve the production problem, and this consisted of reallocating my human resources to the places where they were needed the most: workers were moved to the locations with the most shields, which had a negative impact on the amount of food and money I was able to acquire. But this trade-off was very necessary to the development of my civilization.
Trade-offs have always been an economic reality, and choosing the less beneficial alternative can be devastating. Governments must choose what is best for their people, and this is especially crucial when everyday needs aren’t being met. I made a good economic decision to expand my shield production at the expense of food production and money because shields were scarce while the others were in surplus. I favored this command style economy which enabled me to position workers exactly where they were needed. The market-based economy where the workers chose where they wanted to work themselves was not satisfactory, so I took command. At the time it was really the only option I had that could solve the scarcity problem.
3 comments:
In my opinion, you may have been focusing too much on shield production while playing the game, and overestimating it's importance. If you had run your country democratically in accordance to other nations there would be less of a chance of them declaring war on you and military would only need to be sufficient enough to fend off the barbarians, a task that is not incredibly difficult. As Diamond mentioned, those societies that did best were the ones that initially obtained a food surplus. If you had allowed your nation to obtain more food and gold first, maybe in addition to some technologies, shield production may also have increased. If the people within your society had been happy and not dying due to starvation they may have better produced what was asked of them. Your dictatorial style of rule may actually have been what slowed down the production, even though you feel that it was the only choice you had. Hitler probably said the same thing about his way of ruling but it was ultimately what led to his demise. If you are not good to your own people they will ultimately turn against you and join with other nations to help defeat you. However, I treated my people well by insisting on strong food and culture production and when they were taken over by another nation they rebelled and came back under my control. I think treating both your own and other civilizations well is the best way to advance within the game.
I agree with exactly what your doing. I'm having a hard time with balancing out my food production as well as my strategy with military options. Having money isn't everything although we all think it is. Figuring out how to dispense production as well as shielding your cities is a task that we have to experience by losing. We all hate losing but in this game of chance, strategy, and inexperience we all have had some problem with the way we have created our cities in the first place.
I understand what you mean, Jill, about the importance of making citizens happy. My citizens were happy and weren't dying of starvation, however, and reallocating them to locations with more shields was what had to be done. I had so much food and so little shields, and a command approach was my way of ensuring that not only goods in general were produced, but that the "right" goods were produced. My mistake right from the beginning was not forming alliances with other civilizations, and therefore my military had to be very strong in order to survive. The combination of that reality and not enough shields was what ultimately lead to my civilization being completely destroyed. Internal problems allowed external forces to defeat me. Going back to the command economy approach, the computer artificial intelligence that automatically told workers which squares to occupy was not very helpful. In my first post I mentioned how the workers were in a market economy because they chose where they wanted to work, but now I realize that there were signs of it being a tradition economy because the workers seemed to want to just produce food and gold, as all of their ancestors before them had. As Robert Heilbroner in "The Making of Economic Society" mentions, traditional economies are the most stagnant, so I decided on a command approach to promote more growth. My civilization needed a balance of resources and obviously the citizens didn't know how to attain this balance themselves, so I helped them by taking control. Yes, I still ended up being defeated, but it would have happened a lot sooner if I hadn't made a change. Since my last game I have started over and took your advice about being democratic and I constantly trade with other civilizations to ensure that it wouldn't be beneficial for them to declare war on me. Thank you for your help! I am now able to focus on expanding my cities instead of expanding an expensive army.
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