My experience with the Civilization games has been, to this point, limited. Derek was always a big Civ fan, but me, I only played a bit of Civ II on another friend’s computer. It was fun, but I didn’t REALLY get into it.

But with all of the exceedingly positive press Civilization IV has received, combined with the fact that I was wanting a nice turn-based strategy game for my laptop (and older ones like Alpha Centauri don’t support my laptop’s 1680x1050 widescreen display), I decided to drink the Civilization IV kool-aid.

I see what the fuss is about.

I became sold on the game when I coaxed the Egyptians to go to war with a French empire that had me hemmed in geographically, and was trying to strong-arm me. They warred for quite some time, but then the Russians declared war on Egypt too. Not long thereafter, Egypt declared peace with France so that they could deal with Russia… and they did it just before I was going to make my move against France. Unfortunate, but the length of the war allowed me to build and expand while the French were throwing resources into battle. Besides, the Russians were getting pissed at me too, probably looking to pillage my little colonies by their borders soon, but their war with Egypt will keep them busy.

And now it’s past 4:00am and I need to sleep. I didn’t think it was anywhere near this late.

Now I get it.