At home, on January 18th, using my desktop computer, it began so smoothly. Civ 1 began loading a nostalgic pixel cut scene, showing the birth of a planet. Having played several of the more modern iterations of Sid Meyer’s Civilization, I felt confident in my abilities. I was given the option to begin the game as one of six different countries: German, Roman, Babylonian, French, Zulu and Egyptian. I chose the Romans because I figured, who doesn’t want to be the Romans? Also it helped that the Romans conquered all of the other options (or that area of the world anyway) at one point or the other, with the exception of the Zulu. The screen shifted to black, and then a square of terrain surrounding a symbol representing my first settler, with the rest of the world unknown to me. I founded Rome with the settler, and began the construction of a vast army. Science and culture would not be my approach, oh no. I would go for a horde of Roman troops to engulf the world before it had a chance to develop. I found this plan to be fairly effective. I was able to gain approximately fifteen warriors and a Phalanx (from a nice friendly village). The world was quickly becoming viewable by me, with my loyal army venturing far and wide, yet not discovering any other empires. It seemed that the world was much larger than I had anticipated it would be. Then one of my warriors stumbled onto a seemingly innocent village. but instead of gifting me with gold or maps, they were hostile. Three barbarian cavalry burst forth and murdered my poor warrior before I could cuss out the screen. Furiously, I mustered my forces and sent them marching back towards Rome to defend their capital. I had left several troops inside the city, but I didn’t want to see if they would be enough. But half way through the race to my capital, a message appeared, covering the game. Some villager was challenging my validity as a ruler. In order to remain in power over my forces, i had to prove that I was actually of royal blood by answering a question. I was provided with a picture of a factory, and asked what two technologies lead to that structure. Since I hadn’t read the manual, I naturally had no idea what the answer was. So I tried to logic my way out of it, but it turns out that “Metallurgy and Industrialization” was not the answer. My subjects laughed at my feeble response (the games words, not mine), and I was allowed to try again, but like before I failed. To my horror, all of my troops fled the battle field, abandoning me in my hour of need, and I watched helplessly as the barbarians stormed into Rome and I was treated to my first complete and utter defeat to the barbarians. In retrospect, I cant tell if i like the function of the population questioning the ruler. On one hand it seems like an interesting and cool dynamic, forcing the player to gain a wealth of knowledge just to remain in control of their forces. However, this dynamic does not age well. In an age where game manuals are mainly used in-game, or not even existing anymore, outside of $60 strategy guides, people just don’t have the patience for that kind of study for their games. For my next play session, I plan to have a second browser window open, with the manual open and ready to browse. I haven’t given up on the horde of Romans descending on unwary AI civs.