So Pike and I have been playing a little game of Civ IV over the past couple of days. Standard enough settings; just she and I, Pangaea map, regular sized world, etc. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t play as she was expecting me to play.

See, normally we’re both turtles and techers. As I’ve said before on this blog I very much like to establish a solid defense, build up within it, establish a strong technological lead, and then strike once I am prepared and assured victory. But I knew this wouldn’t work with Pike, because she does the exact same thing, and it would be unlikely that I could establish a significant tech lead at any point for long enough to overrun her.

So I did something unorthodox, and this unorthodoxy proved successful. What I did was, I built an army. Not a vast 30-unit stack of doom, just a moderate sized stack, but enough that I could bring force to bear against any one city of my choosing and hopefully conquer it.

Now, the eagle-eyed and Civ-informed among you might notice something from that picture. Nibru is a city of the Sumerians. Sumeria is led by Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is a Defensive leader. In fact, once I got eyes on the city, I discovered that she had very wisely been whipping archers out every turn, and even though it lacks a barracks, they all started with decent promotions anyway. Had I actually attacked, I’m not at all confident that I could have won. But Pike calculated that her own chances were poor, and was also fearful of a ship I had knocking around that she presumed had marine forces aboard (It was just an old unit I had sent out to explore and forgotten about entirely), so she capitulated to my demands, and several technologies were mine for free. More insidiously, her extra units both cost her population to create, thus significantly slowing her growth and causing unhappiness, and the increase in military units will also be a drain on her treasury.

I give no quarter. Talk about times you have been cruelly aggressive or trolly in multiplayer games!