A weblog by Smaran Dayal

I’ve been hearing good things about a CMS called Textpattern. Arif has been using it for as long as I’ve known him. His friend Angad has even made some themes for it. So, the day before yesterday, I finally created a sub-domain and set it up on my server. It’s nice. Not nearly as user-friendly as WordPress, the CMS I’m running this site on, but it isn’t bad either. Have a look at my Textpattern site: smaran.txt (update: it’s no longer online as of 12/4/08)

Civilization IV is a computer game I’ve been spending a lot of time on over the past couple of months. To put it very, very crudely, it’s an extremely advanced form of chess.

As the name suggests, it’s your task to build a civilisation and lead it to victory. There are a handful of ways in which you can win a game:

• Build a spaceship and colonise the star system of Alpha Centauri.
• Increase your culture to such an amount that three of your cities achieve the ‘legendary’ status.
• Have such good diplomatic relations that your fellow civilisations vote to make you world leader.
• Collect more points that any other civilisation by 2050.
• Conquer all other civilisations’ cities.
• Dominate a large part of the world by force and negotiation.

When starting a game of Civ, you pick a civilisation (eg. Sumeria, Babylon, Netherlands, etc.), and if there is more than one leader for that empire in the game, you pick a leader too. Civilisations start with different technologies, like, Agriculture, Mining, Mysticism, and The Wheel. And every leader has two traits; Aggressive and Spiritual, for example.

There is one leader I’ve always been at least semi-successful with all the way up to the ‘Noble’ difficulty: Brennus of the Celtics.

His traits are Spiritual and Charismatic. Being spiritual lets me move between civics and religions without anarchy. In Civ, every turn matters, so saving 4-5 turns of anarchy in total can be a nice advantage. The trait also allows me to build temples at twice the normal speed. Remember: temples give +1 happiness. An unruly population can ruin production and research in a city. Being Charismatic, I get a +1 happiness bonus in all cities, and an extra +1 happiness from monuments and broadcast towers. So, ideally, one would want to have a monument, temple and broadcast tower in every city. There’s a really easy way to make this happen. Build Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower.

The Celtics start with Mysticism and The Wheel Hunting. I take advantage of Mysticism by either quickly researching Meditation and thereby founding Buddhism or by researching Fishing or Agriculture and giving my capital, Bibracte, fodder to grow, and then making a rush for Monotheism to found Judaism and adopt Brennus’ favourite civic, Organised Religion. To research Monotheism, you have to research Masonry first. Starting with The Wheel lets me build quarries (if I happen to have stone or marble in my cultural borders) and connect them to my capital with roads ASAP. Hunting lets me immediately research Archery if I spot barbarians near my territory or if another civ declares war on me very early in the game (more likely in multiplayer).

The one aspect of Civ I like most is building wonders. Even though Industrious isn’t one of Brennus’ traits, I am still able to construct a good amount of wonders during the course of the game. I’ve even won a Cultural Victory with him.

Assuming you’re a Civ player, you should now be able to see why Brennus of Celtia is my leader of choice.

Some Civilization links
Civilization IV and its discontents (read the comments too)
Civilization Anonymous

Civilization IV is a computer game I’ve been spending a lot of time on over the past couple of months. When starting a game of Civ, you pick a civilisation and a leader. There is one leader I’ve always been at least semi-successful with all the way up to the ‘Noble’ difficulty: Brennus of the Celtics.

A few friends of mine from Digg, Mu, Andy, and Reg, have a weekly podcast called the Drill Down. A few days ago, I stayed up late to join them on a show about BitTorrent. That show is now live. Do give it a listen.

I was nervous during the recording, and it was the first time I’d talked to Reg and Andy, so excuse the frequent ums and uhs.

Cheers.