last post

After playing the simulation game Civilization IV for a semester I learned a lot of valuable lessons on why some societies are successful and others collapse. All together throughout game play I build up about ten civilizations and experienced with many different tactics trying to take my society to top of the food chain. My second to last civilization was by far my best society that I was able to create. I played the game with a great deal of patience and this allowed me to take my time and properly develop my nation state. The problem when you play to impatiently you are not taking the proper steps to secure territories and develop needed infrastructure, and create a food surplus. So originally aggressive military strategies will be successful, but eventually a small quickly developed state will collapse under the pressure of multi-front wars.

However with my successful second to last civilization I took my time and allowed my nation state to properly develop. My population was well developed as well as my technologies, infrastructure, and food surplus. Then when I began to engage in battles I had the resources and man power to win and take on battles on multiple fronts when needed. I almost became overwhelmed when societies from my north, south, and east tried to invade and over take my empire, but time was on my side my society was huge compared to the others so time was on my side and I used it to my advantage.

By the end of my reign over the world my society was the size of the ancient Roman Empire. Eventually I feel my society grew so much it became segmented and no longer acted as one unit. Unity and nationalism are needed features of successful societies and I think what happened was no longer was my society unified and diversity led to the collapse of my society. Overall though the game taught me valuable lessons and helped me understand Diamond’s thesis why some civilizations do so well and prosper and why others fail and collapse.