Imperialism

In my last post I wrote about my great investment in a war to expand my territory. I ended up winning the war and am now building new cities in Australia. At this point in the game there are two very large civs, my civ (which is on the rise), and three puny civs that have no chance of getting back in the game. The two large civs have not expanded for quite some time, while I have been crossing oceans to build new cities in the lands that I have conquered.

My actions are comparable to those of Great Britain in its imperialistic era. The British were land and natural resource hungry, so they set up colonies all over the world, from the New World to India. They moved in and defeated anyone who opposed them. I have taken the same strategy and am driven by the same desires that the British had. As the world map seemed to be shrinking due to new technologies like airplanes, I knew that I would need to take advantage of the resources around me before one of the already larger civs did. Imperialism was my only way of catching up with them.

Now that I have more land and power, the gap between my civ and the two larger civs has decreased. I don't have to worry so much about defending myself because a war would bring either one of them huge losses. I can now focus on increasing my civ's culture and technology. Improving my new cities is my goal, and I won't need to expand (nor would I be able to) for awhile.

Defeating those who oppose you is only the first step in imperialism. The next step will be difficult, as I need to get my new cities up and running quickly before somebody else tries to come in and take over. After America was discovered control of the land changed hands quite a few times, and that is why we see French, Spanish, and English influences today. If everything goes according to plan and no one else tries to take over, the Australian continent will only be subjected to my Viking cultural influence. I need to protect my investment, after all.

The Great Investment

Up until recently, the entire world map in my game was occupied by civilizations. No civ was able to expand without taking away land from another. There were five remaining civs, two of which clearly dominated, and three of which were about even. Mine was one of the lower three civs, but I vowed to get ahead of the other two. The only way that was possible was through war.

I knew that a war would be quite costly to my civ and would slow down production for quite awhile. How I could limit the risks involved with war was my main problem to figure out. I ended up striking a mutual protection pact with the most powerful civ on the map, and this came at quite a high cost. I had to give them extra technologies and gold for them to accept the deal, but I knew it would be a great investment that would help me to be successful. And it was! As soon as I declared war on the Egyptians (who occupied all of Australia), my ally joined the war and helped me obliterate them. It turned out that the Egyptians had a mutual protection pact with my closest neighbor, the Aztecs, and when I realized that they had also declared war on me, I began having second thoughts about starting this World War. In the end, however, our alliance proved to be much stronger than our enemy's, and now they are almost completely wiped out.

Phase two of my investment plan was to build new cities in the now unoccupied land. Producing more workers and soldiers to help build up these new cities clearly slowed down the growth of my already existing cities, but again, I saw it as an investment that was worth the initial losses. Having not built new cities would have actually resulted in a higher opportunity cost because other civs would have moved in and taken over the valuable resources if I hadn't. Only a few years have passed since the founding of my new cities, and my investment is already starting to pay off. My treasury is increasing and I am now able to produce more units per turn than before. The purpose of making these investments was to expand my territory and be able to contend with the two powerful civs, and I am happy to say that I am much closer to that goal than I was before the war.

Not just anyone has the ability to make investments that will turn out to be successful. A large amount of saving beforehand is required because investments require giving up resources that would generally be used for normal production. "The Making of Economic Society" states that "saving regulates the pace at which investment can proceed" (78). This is very true because if a civ doesn't have any extra resources saved, then making an investment in something will take away the resources needed to maintain stability. Having extra resources, however, makes it possible to invest in something without having drastic consequences in other areas. In other words, you can only maintain that which you have enough resources to support.

Investments are an extremely important aspect of the game, and no civ can survive without making them. Pretty much every action in the game is an investment because most don't have immediate effects, but rather are beneficial later on in the game. For example, building railroads is an investment because it takes a lot of time and effort to do it, but when a war calls for soldiers to be highly mobilized, they are obviously a wise investment. Without investing, a civ simply can't keep up with the rapidly changing world. Investment leads to growth, and growth to survival.