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Americans Won Economic Victory by Stealing from Arabs

If you are reading this post expecting a conspiracy filled anti-American rant then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place (and my sneaky title worked), because this post is about Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution on XBox 360.

I bought the game a couple of weeks ago after playing a demo and have played it a lot since because it’s very addictive indeed. The aim of the game is to grow your civilization from ancient times to modern times and to win one of four victory types: Domination, Technological, Cultural, and Economic. I’m now playing the game on Deity level (the hardest level) after having beat it quite a few times on the easier levels.

I first beat Deity level with the Chinese by winning a Technological victory, but it was *hard*! For my next attempt I chose the Americans with the aim of winning an Economic victory. I had build a great civilization but was slightly behind the other civilizations in all areas and they were all warring against me because I seemed to be in the middle of the map. Then the French built and launched an Alpha Centauri colonisation ship which was going to arrive in 10 turns (thus they would win a Technological victory) and the Arabs reached 20,000 gold meaning they could build the World Bank to win an economic victory in a few turns – and I was nowhere near either type of victory!

So I had a brainwave; I got every city I had to make spies which I formed into spy rings (a group of 3 spies) and then I sent them to the nearest two Arab cities and stole their gold – huge amounts of gold. In no time at all I had 20,000 gold and then got my best production city to make the World Bank in 5 turns thus securing an economic victory! It was a pretty funny victory because I thought I was going to loose but I found a new way to turn around my fortune in no time at all – I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere 😉

Anyway the game is great and I totally recommend it (and all the other Civilization games) but beware that they are very addictive and, if you are a tad compulsive like me, you’ll find yourself drawn right in and up very late at night in no time. So if you’ve got a busy schedule as a game developer, you may wish to avoid 😀

4 Responses to “Americans Won Economic Victory by Stealing from Arabs”

  1. Luke Hedman Says:

    “Just one more turn.”

    The whole Civilization series is classic. Some of my fondest game memories are of playing Sid’s Alpha Centauri branch off.

    One of my favorite things about the TBS genre is that you can actually negotiate with the AI (assuming it’s designed well). Until Rise of Nations came out RTS games didn’t really have that. Even with all of the hybrid games of today, staples like Civ still set an example for depth and replay value.

    As far as being too busy to play, you can always tell yourself you’re doing “research”. That also makes buying the game a tax write off I think. 😀

  2. Grey Alien Games Says:

    Re: “Just one more turn” Man that is so true! It may as well be “Just one more hit on the crack pipe” though. Amazing how one turn follows another until it’s 4am…

    It’s true that it was actually good research for me as it’s made me think about some interesting strategy ideas that I may implement in my next game…

  3. Charles Says:

    “Just one more turn” That’s why they added a clock in Civ4. Just so you know what time it really is without having to lookup/alttab. What an addictive series of games.

  4. Grey Alien Games Says:

    lol at the clock in Civ4. I guess they didn’t add an alarm to it so that players could be reminded to stop playing.