Journey to the West
At the end of my last session, I was motivated to cross the ocean. Instead of playing stationary, I wanted to bring my power to the world. I built another city by the ocean to prepare to travel the vast seas. I remembered that whenever I was attacked or visited by other civilizations, they always brought over two attacking units and a diplomat unit. I decided to play it safe and follow that trend – I produced a diplomat and two chariots. I then built a trireme to transport my units around. A problem occurred here as the trireme can only transport two units at a time, so I ended up building a second one along with another chariot. Once those were completed, I started my journey to the west. Well, it wasn’t much of a journey at all. The next island was literally a single ocean tile over to the west. Nonetheless, I unloaded my units and immediately found the Aztecs. They issued a trade offer which I did not accept because they called me “uncivilized”, and then tried offering a peace treaty. What nerve, right?! Needless to say, I declined. I had my diplomat steal their technology (pottery) then proceeded to attack them with my chariots. It was an easy takeover of their city. I was told that the city I just took over had restored civil order. I didn’t know what that meant, but I guess they weren’t doing too well before I took over anyway, huh? I started moving around more on that island and found more of the Aztec cities. I continued to ferry over units to fortify the cities I had just taken over, while improving on the cities’ developments. I eventually took conquered the Aztecs and claimed another island to myself. Around this point, I was getting a warning every turn that I was running out of funds. I didn’t know how to fix it, so I decided it would be a good time to stop.
Finally Some Success
This playthrough really gave me a feeling of success and accomplishment. I was able to conquer an entire civilization and gained some more land to further my strengths. However, while taking over more cities, I found it harder to manage everything that I was doing. I guess that is also evident because I was given a warning about my funds being too low. Not much to reflect on except the game becoming relatively harder as I grow stronger. It feels kind of like real life. The stronger and more populated civilizations get, the more financial, political, and civil problems arise. Sort of like the quote: “with great power comes great responsibility”?