Civ Rev Redux

Thought of a couple more tips I'd neglected in my last post regarding Civilization Revolution tips... probably brought to mind again when I played 3 more times in the last day or so...

The advantage of having a democracy is that you get a big boost in science and gold production.  The disadvantage is that the Congress won't let you break peace treaties or otherwise declare war unless attacked.  There's an easy enough way around this so you get to get the benefits and circumvent the negative.  Call for a change of government, launch your invasion during the brief anarchy, and then the next turn when it asks what kind of gov't you want, put in a democracy again.  The congress will let you finish whatever war is underway when they come in.  The penalty for having anarchy for 1 turn is pretty negligible, if anything in this game.

As you start getting towards the tailend of a longer game, you will have discovered all the scientific advances you'll ever need.  In this case, go ahead and switch your gov't over to fundamentalism.  Fundamentalism's + is added strength among your attacking armies, downside is libraries and universities fail to increase your knowledge.  Well, if you've already got planes and tanks and such, you don't really need any more science... and the +1 boost to the invading and defending forces comes in handy!

Civ Rev... say it with me... Civ Rev... mmmm

If you're anything like me... and hey, you've come this far... then you may have blown the last 25 years or so playing some iteration of the game Civilization.  The latest crackesque addiction is Civilization Revolution, which is the game ported for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.  I suppose it's likely on Android too, but I don't know the first thing about Androids or give two craps about them, so... yeah.

Some tips for playing Civ Rev, and beating it...

• If you're going for victory by way of domination (aka marching in and taking over all other countries), then work to get feudalism as soon as possible.  There's a handful of pre-requisite technologies before you can get feudalism... Monarchy, Horseback Riding, Ceremonial Burial and Writing are among them.  The thing is once your culture figures out feudalism you can start cracking out knights.  Knights have an attack strength of 4.  Put three knights together in an army and you've got at least 12 strength off the bat.  Have your knight army get some experience knocking over Barbarian villages to become a veteran, fight till you can get them the power of infiltration, do any number of things and that knight army now has a power easily in the 30s.  You have to go waaay into the game before you get the kind of defenses to regularly stop an invading force of that power, and since the computer players are less inclined to be thinking purely militarily you can really get at it.  Till they start sending their own knights after yours.  Knights ain't much for defense, sadly..
• If you're playing the Attack of the Huns scenario, try playing as the Mongols.  One of the quirks of the Mongols is every time they invade a Barbarian village, the Barbarians decide to join up with you.  You'll have a huge map of cities in no time.
• Know how much science you need.  You only really need to discover everything  if you're trying to win a scientific victory and get your spaceship built.  If you're on the route to economic victory you only need to go so far as to figure out banking.  If you're militarily inclined, you don't need more than infantry and artillery, and honestly can probably stop at Tank and still get by..  If you're going for a cultural victory (which ain't easy), the only thing you need is to be able to build cathedrals, which you get once you discover religion.  After you have all the science you need, you can probably just go into each city and change the allocation of resource from science/research to MONEY makin'.
• Whenever possible, make sure you found your city in a place that has both resources (stone tools icon) and food (green apples icon).  Both are required, because otherwise a city can't produce anything or grow in population at all.
• If you're playing the Beta Centauri scenario, make sure you switch all your cities over to producing cash instead of science.  This scenario has you (and everyone else) already having all the attainable technologies, so you just lay into building your treasury instead and it's a fairly clear path to economic victory.
• Try to hem in civilizations early so they can't expand.  If there's a chokepoint on land -- say, a narrow passage that's the only way out, look to plunk down some settlers there.  They'll have to declare war on you just to get past (and then, of course, stock up and be ready in case that does happen!)
• Go find those Wonders of the World or whatever they're called.  Do it quickly while they're still out there.  Send out a little galley and see if you can find'em on another island, and once you have navigation you can start sending bigger ships into deeper waters.  The prizes they give you --- a bunch of Great People, a pile of money, etc., are all great boosts.
• Sometimes when you have a Great Person come into one of your cities, the option will be to instantly complete whatever you're working on.  The other option will be something like "Let me think about that."   Click on this option, then go into the control for that same city and change what you're working on to one of the Wonders... whichever one looks best for whatever paves your road to victory.  Then select that Great Person AGAIN and tell him to instantly finish building THAT.

There are probably some other tips I could pass along, but that's ranty enough for now....

Among the things we learned from yesterday's NCAA champeenship....

We can include in the list of revelations from yesterday's BCS thingy, we will always remember that...

...ummm...

We finally decided that LSU defensive end Barkevious Mingo belongs in the upper echelon of players named Barkevious ever to put on a collegiate uniform.

Tecmo Orange Bowl

Seriously? I woke up to see that West Virginia scored 70 pts in the Orange Bowl last night? Ummm, damn.

I know ticket sales were slow, but did I miss the news that they were switching the OB to an arena football game?

Certainly doesn't make me feel much better about the 'Noles losing to Clemson. They seemed a fairly solid team earlier in the year, don't know what happened. Gotta feel bad for Clemsons and Clemdaughters who dropped a couple of thou to come down, get hotels and go to the game.

I mean, I'm happy they came... after all, their Ford pickup trucks with the shotgun rack and the sticker of Calvin peeing on a Chevy logo being in town for a week is what keeps me from having a state income tax. But still, that long trip home after an L sucketh.

Maybe if they just gave ME the millions...

I've commented (complained?) here on the past before about Toyotathon Hondadays Chevypalooza advertisements.  It just seems to be obnoxiously ever present, and I'm not even a little bit convinced it positively influences sales.

The new Volkswagen ads take this to a bizarre extra level of uselessness and general suckitude, though.

At first glance, the theme would certainly seem to be "People who are test driving our car at the dealership mistakenly think it's a car they own!! Hah!"

After you've seen the series a couple of hundred times, you may get what they're actually meaning to say... something about how the car is so easy to get initially in terms of down payments, they, umm, need to remind you that... you need to buy the car first then take it.

Regardless of what the subject is, I submit that I don't think the widely placed and regularly repeating TV spots will sell a single VW that wasn't highly likely to sell anyway.

That's the argument with these (mildly) humorous TV spots.  You'll occasionally hear "Well hey they got you talking about it, didn't they?  And isn't that the point?"

NO.  It costs millions of dollars to create, cut and distribute these ads.  VW is no happier that I'm here ranting into the ether over it.  Advertising should move product.

I'm probably bitter, or at least biased, because advertising budgets are usually substantially larger than PR budgets.  And this always seemed askew to me.

Let's say you see 15 tv ads with a singing cartoon chicken in a Chevy... then read an article where a journalist looks at and independently examines the benefits of a new Ford model in detail... which is more likely to loosen your ol' purse strings?