Miscellany

[stoutfellow]

1. My former student S stopped by today. She's been carrying out empirical investigations of a certain family of group rings, and making a series of conjectures on that basis. We spent an enjoyable hour or so chatting about her latest; we were able to show that 1/6 of the conjecture is correct. (The other 5/6 is still up in the air.)

2. After listening repeatedly to the albums I bought back in January, I've decided that the two I like best are the ones by Joni Mitchell and the Guess Who. It's been a while since my last post on music, so I'll probably say something about those two sometime soon.

3. Having completed the cycle of all 26 leaders in Civ IV, I'm now going back to my lowest-scoring leaders and trying to improve them. I just redid Saladin, and boosted my score from 4094 to over 8000. It would have been higher, I think, except that the bloody Russians attacked me. I was going for a Cultural Victory, but to put them down I had to switch my civics from Free Speech (with that blessed boost in Culture points) and Pacifism (ramping up Great Leader production) to Vassalage and Theocracy (both increasing my military capacity). I think the Russian attack delayed my eventual victory by at least a decade. (On the other hand, I'm pretty sure population and area factor into the final score, and I did conquer almost all of Russia, so maybe there was actually a decent tradeoff.)

Comments

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

I have conquered this land. I shall call it "This Land." (g)

Sounds like an interesting game (?), challenge (?); is it a role-playing game?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

It's what's known as a "god game": you have responsibility for an entire civilization over the course of thousands of years. Your job is to lead your people to world dominance, which can be achieved militarily, diplomatically, culturally, technologically, or demographically. It's... extremely complicated. You explore and found cities; found and spread religions; construct roads, mines, farms, and other improvements; build buildings, armies, and Wonders of the World; negotiate with rival civilizations (and, if occasion arises, fight them); and research technologies. You can choose any of twenty-six leaders from eighteen different civilizations; each leader, and each civilization, has different advantages, making different styles of play appropriate. You can (depending on the technologies you've discovered) choose different "civics", describing the policies of your empire as regards governance, the economy, labor, law, and religion, and each has different advantages...

It's complicated.

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Wow. It sounds more than complicated! What color is the sky in *your* world? (g)

So, what kind of world have you founded, who or what do your people worship, and what have you done *better* than the originals? (I assume that you get to use hindsight, yes?)

Hope you're having a marvelous vacation!

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

It's going well so far.

The religions you can found are restricted to Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam. Each is associated with a particular technology; the first civilization to discover that tech founds the religion. One of its cities becomes the Holy City for that religion, which grants various advantages. For the rest... well, one of my best games involved completing a starship in the year 1946. (I was playing as Franklin Roosevelt, who has a very congenial set of advantages.)

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Wow. You mean Roswell really happened? (g)

It sounds like a very demanding *game.* I can see why you're enjoying it.