Blog Post #2 Defensive military strategies

Originally my goal in playing Civilization IV was to conquer as much new land and territories as possible without any concerns for the future of my society. Soon I realized this approach always led to the collapse of a civilization and there was no way to fight multi-front battles while at the same time preparing for food shortages and crop failures. Eventually the costs of war caught up with me and my civilization could not handle the stresses or costs of allocating all available resources to conquer new lands and rapid expansion of a society.
So I took a new approach one in which I focused on slow gradual thought-out expansion. This allowed me to develop food surplus and prepare for unexpected crop shortfalls and possible attacks from the outside. Also allocating more soldiers to defensive military tactics rather than offensive allowed me to more adequately secure my cities and lands to protect the people from invasions and foreigners. This made it more difficult for my cities to fall due to attacks from opposing civilizations and barbarians.
Another advantage to making a more well rounded and balanced society was that it enabled me to better advance all aspects of society and not just focus on the military and ground soldiers. More resources could be put to use in order to advance technologies and improve the quality of life for all my citizens. Examples of these advances are improved farming techniques, and better city management as well as improved defensive tactics and structural protection from outside threats.
Comparing my new approach of allocating resources to civilizations of the past I was able to see that my new approach was very similar to societies that have prospered and the overly aggressive military techniques that I once engaged in were common in societies that failed. Examples of civilizations that succeed due to similar practices as mine are the United States during isolationism, Australia, and Switzerland. All of these nations focused military resources on defensive measures and protection from outside threats. While allocating the vast majority of resources to protecting the people and helping improve the quality of life for everyone. Like my civilization these nations cared most about insuring every citizen had their basic requirements for life ment and expansion and concurring of new territories was trivial and insignificant.
Aggressive military strategies have been shown throughout history to be extremely successful in the short term, but in the long term no civilization has been able to sustain the added stresses and costs of aggressive military techniques and all society that try rapid expansion fail and collapse due to unexpected monetary, food, and human shortages. Examples of these civilizations are ancient Roman Empire, as well as France under the control of Napoleon. Eventually fighting on too many fronts will place too many added strains on the civilization and lead to the collapse of a once great society. Napoleon’s empire was vast and great, but his million man march into Moscow strained his empire and the nations resources were spread to thin and eventually the society crumbled under the added stress of yet another war on another front. This shows another important aspect of societies to consider, resources might be available in some parts of a nation. But many times transportation limitations create shortages in some parts of the society, and shortfalls may be isolated to heavily populated or rural areas. France had plenty of food and warm clothing for the soldiers, but it was not possible for the nation to get these goods to the front line and eventually hundreds of thousands of men died dude to the fact available resources could not be transported to where they were needed. Rome did the same thing allocated far too many of the nations citizens and resources to conquering new lands and eventually the interior became weak and the nation practically divided and collapsed from the inside out.
These examples of great civilizations that eventually collapsed show why my civilizations originally failed when I was overly aggressive in my military strategies. Keeping a civilization strong and powerful is like keeping the human body healthy. Everything needs to be balanced; war is a lot like exercise a nation needs to be able to expand its territories like a person building up muscle. However one needs to be careful not to ware out ones body, or in the instance of a civilization not spreading soldiers to thin on too many fronts and use up to many resources of the nation, and tire out the military and fall to outside invaders. Overall the game Civilization IV helped me to better understand how overly aggressive civilizations fall, and what it takes to slowly develop a society and what attributes lead to the success of a civilization and what attributes lead to the decline of a once prosperous powerful society.