Lost completely lost

I started playing civilization January 14th 4:30-6:30 with a classmate. We decided to meet up so we could try and figure out the game because  two heads are better than one right? I struggled with my browser before I read that Chrome works best. It’s interesting to me how some browsers are more compatible with certain websites than others. The game was up and running and I had to input the type of graphics I wanted which is not something that we have to do before playing video games now. It gave me the option to choose whether or not I wanted to use my mouse with my keyboard and I chose to use it. The game was designed to play with a keyboard but I felt as if I would need the mouse because I’m used to playing games with a controller. Once I started playing the game it was hit or miss. I was trying to establish a city but it was not clear how I could do that. I asked Damon and he had done it and he said he wasn’t sure. So after a couple more clicks I got it. I do not know how I did it but I did. My first civilization was destroyed by barbarians within the hour. It was small of only 30,000. I restarted the game from scratch because I closed my browser and reopened to get out of the black screen. This time I chose the Zulu tribe and again accidentally established a citing on the side of the island. My city grew in population pretty fast. I was trying to figure out how to grow in population so I clicked on the city and collected the food and other objects. Quickly my city died from famine.

Starting from Somewhere

Jan 20 12-1 On try two I chose to load my saved game. This is actually a very important thing in video games. Having a saved game assures the player that their progress won’t be lost and encourages them to come back to play so they can discover new things. Personally if I don’t see progress I tend to give up on a game or tv show. It gets boring. The saved game I told Damon about when we met up again. Before we started playing we talked about the things we had learned on our own. He shared the manual with me. I slightly skimmed this realizing that there was a lot of things that are written into the manual. The game becomes a lot more complicated if you don’t have the manual as reference or guide. As the manual referenced I planted the crops and other objects back where I found them and the population restored itself. I spent a lot of time clicking buttons with not a whole lot happening. For some reason my citizens kept spontaneously decided to keep adding to my palace. That was the only thing happening for a while. Then I kept getting attacked by barbarians and eventually they took over my city.

 

Learning from mistakes

Jan 28 9-10 After losing to barbarians I decided to reenforce my troops. It was a battle between building a caravan and other things to focusing on military. It was a very mundane session when all of a sudden a Roman decided to message me. They established a peace treaty but demanded I pay a tribute. This happened like five times before the Romans went away. This session ended with the game saying in a newspaper that I wanted to retire early. Interaction with other players even if it’s with the game system makes the game more exciting. Although the Romans were part of the console I felt better that I was not a solo player anymore. I think this is why online games are successful.

Off at Sea

Jan 29 2-4. During my last session I picked up where the game had wanted me to retire it asked me if I wanted to continue my reign or retire and I picked up where I left off. It was very tedious. Barbarians were attacking and eventually nothing happened. I chose to build a boat and eventually i got one. I sailed around discovering new lands but I couldn’t disembark. There were enemy boats that would destroy mine so I had to keep building new ones. Eventually I gave up and quit the game. I am currently at 3400 AD. I was confused on how to establish new civilizations if I couldn’t trade because my boat was looked at as an enemy force. The game felt a little pointless to me but I didn’t refer back to the game manual after that first time. I’m assuming that would’ve helped a lot.