Making the Change

As I said in my last post, I had insufficently placed my cities. I tried to expand to fast and gain more land, but that did not work because I could not supply resources to the new cities fast enough. The result was the attacks of barbarians on my newly built cities. It seemed like the barbarians knew my strategy as one of their barbarians would wait at my borders until I built a new city. I knew I needed to produce a defense system as soon as possible, but I could not build one fast enough. The barbarians where there to destroy the city before I could produce any type of military personnel. So after my mishaps I rellized that I was in need of a serious strategy change if I wanted to stay on top of the world as the most advanced and largest empire. So I decided to build my cities closer together and expansion of my land would come with time and my advancements of technology. After my change of strategy I found that by building cities closer to each other made it easier for them to build up into a highly developed area with a good demand being supplied of natural resources. This is the same concept in the United states today. Cities, towns, or local communites that are located close to big metropolitan areas are more than often more prosperous than the small rural areas. The small rural cities are very important to the large cities because they have farms or other resources that supply the larger cities with their demand for a certain good. But these cities take a chance of being overruned by developmental projects for more housing, eliminating the cities importance. This is what I thought would be a good idea. I thought that putting my cities far away close to trees and other natural resources would be a good idea, and for a little bit it was because it was supplying me with very important natural resources, just like small rural cities in the United States. But this is not working in my game or in the United States. Barbarians are killing my cities in the game and the need for land for the booming real estate industry has overruned and dissipated some of the small rural cities in the United States.

Finding the right spot

While I am well Into my second game (around 1650 AD) I have discovered that in order to have a sucessful empire and economy it requires the right placement of cities. Being apart of the Persian empire means that I am surrounded by water and mountaneous terrain so I am constantly being attacked by barbarian states. I am lucky that I have a strong army and a successful econmy because if I did not I could easily already been wiped out by other empires that border mine (Egyptian, Mongolian, Chinese, and German). I have made mistakes on two accounts in the location of my cities. The first mistake was when I built a city that was located far away from all my other cities hoping to spread my empire but that did not go well. The city was new and did not have much defense so it was not long till barbarians came to destroy it. If I had placed the city closer to another one, I probably would not have encountered the problem. I got to greedy with wanting more land. Expansion can be too fast when you cannot supply resources to newly aquired areas fast enough. I will continue on this game and be careful on placing my cities.

Fresh start

I jut started my new game and, I am trying the new strategies that I mentioned in my last post. I am buliding up my persian empire. I started off by expanding my empire fast. There is a lot more land to work with than when I was with the Japanese empire. I am spreading my cities across the land, but to be sure that the new cities that I build do not get attacked by barbarians or unhappy countries I have my workers constantly building a trade route. This allows goods and resources to be passed along to the new cities so that they can be built up fast to keep up with the progress the rest of the country is experiencing. The trade route will also increase the defense of the new cities that are placed away from the rest, so my territory can be expanded. The trade routes also enable combat units to explore the areas of my territory that have just been produced. Everyone wants to trade with me and open my borders because I am the most technologically advanced and the biggest and most advanced economy. This is similar in todays society. The China and Indian government both have booming economies and that is why our country has a high demand for products that they produce. They produce a majority of the cars, toys, and electronics that we use everyday. In 1998, China's GDP was 7,955.3 billion yuan (Chinese Currency), an increase of 6.4 times since 1978, at constant prices; the outputs of some major industrial and agricultural products, such as grain, cotton, meat, edible oil, coal, steel, cement, cloth and TV sets, leapt from a low postion to first place suppliers in the world. India's economy ranks twelfth largest in the world, with a gross domestic product of US $930.0 billion. But, India is the second fastest growing major economy in the world, with a GDP growth rate of 9.2% at the end of the second quarter of 2006–2007. I hope to keep my economy on the rise just as China and India are. As long as I stay ahead of the technological race I feel that I will have the great economy that I hope for. Also keeping an open trade with other countries will help my economic status.