Ganked By Gandhi: The Doldrums

The assembled crowd stood impatiently in the throne room, shifting from foot to foot as their legs grew tired. The afternoon heat was made even more uncomfortable by the close press of bodies. A low murmur of agitation buzzed throughout the room. Finally Gandhi entered, and the crowd fell silent.

'Thank you for coming.' Gandhi said as he took his seat. 'I have asked you here because you are the greatest minds oh our generation and I have a project for you.' He paused for dramatic effect. 'Your one and only task is to discover Globalisation.' He rose to his feet, expecting cheering and applause, instead a hundred blank faces stared back at him. The room was silent, someone at the back coughed, inexplicably a baby started to cry, a sudden wind whistled through the vaulted ceiling.

'Err,' A brave man started, 'what is it?'

'I don't know, that's what I wanted you to find out.' Gandhi replied incredulously.

'It's just a word, it doesn't mean anything, there's nothing to discover.' The brave man insisted.

'Look,' Gandhi said holding up a big brightly coloured flow chart, 'it's right here on the Tech Tree, Globalisation. Discovering it will mean we can build the United Nations. Now go off and bloody well get on with it.'

The men wearily shuffled out of the hot and stuffy room. 'Don't look at me,' one was heard to say, 'I didn't vote for the old bugger.'

'Of course he's crazy,' said another, 'he's over 5000 years old.'

My humble little empire, small and unimportant... it would seem.

When I play Civ there is always a period of economic, diplomatic and scientific stability. Everything just ticks along sedately as each empire settles down to consolidate their power base. I find it usually happens towards the 1800s when wars become more expensive and dangerous as diplomatic ties grow more complex and declaring war on one world power usually drags others in as well. I would normally spend this time carefully selecting my target and building my forces for devastating surprise attacks. But in this game I can’t do that, I already have my one and only unit and I need the friendship of other leaders so I can win a diplomatic victory. All the above is really just me trying to avoid saying that for 250 years, nothing happened.  I researched things, I built buildings and plodded ever onwards. I kept renewing old wars continually. But, apart from the destruction of the Siamese empire, they are having little impact except to sour other diplomatic ties. See, virtually nothing happened. But don’t worry, just like any decent outside broadcaster I will fill the intervening time with pointless non-sense.

1640ad: Archaeology Discovered - I'm presuming that they dug it up... probably with trowels... while Tony Robinson watched.

1685ad: Gunpowder Discovered - The inventor is currently unknown, dental records are being checked.

I own 78% of the world's wealth, and
the other 22% is what I gave away.

With the invention of Electricity I can build a Stock exchange in each of my cities. My ridiculous treasury means I can simply purchase one in all three of my towns for 1200gps and still have more than 4000gps left. The stock exchange is the last major economic building I was aiming for and so once it was built I simply opened the research screen, clicked on Globalisation and sighed when I realised how long it would take to reach that goal.

1770ad: Biology Discovered - Turns out the body is disgusting!

1822ad: Steam Power Discovered - Now if only it could be used for something.

Is it too late to go for a cultural victory?

Now was the time to implement the third part of my plan. My play through may seem a little hap hazard, but I did have a well thought out plan. I said a well thought-out plan, not a good plan, I do not vouch for my actions as an example of how to play. This stage of my master plan involved a shift from economic and scientific growth to cultural growth. With my vast sums of gold I bought a temple and opera house in each of my cities. With my populace suddenly paragons of culture I was able to adopt new social policies at a much improved rate. Each new point I placed into Rationalism, scientific social policies, to speed my march towards Globalisation and my assumed victory.

1886ad: Rationalism Adopted - The magic of the world dies a little.