The first group of warriors we went out have reported back to me that they have found some ancient ruins. I have instructed them to search these ruins in the hopes that they will find the secrets of an ancient civilization or perhaps the remnants of some ancient civilization that may wish to join the Glorious Chinese Empire. These ruins are within a dense forest so it is no wonder they have been lost to time. The timber should prove useful as the empire grows. We have begun preparations for expanding the empire to a second city, but with how amazing our Empire is, it will take a while to have all the supplies ready. In the meanwhile we continue to explore this land.

As I continue exploring, I discover that I have a City-State to the South. That’s going to put a damper on my expansion south unless I destroy them. Also, if they end up best buds with someone else that’s an enemy on my doorstep. They may be the first casualty of living near the Great Chinese Empire! I’m now beating Dave by one point! Yes! Even when I play on my own, I tend to use the last turn to queue up all my production so I don’t have to remember what my plans were. That’s extra important when I’m playing 1-2 turns per day. So I finally got around to that in this game.

Ever since the play by email (PBEM) feature in Civilization IV, I’ve tried to play multiplayer games with my brothers. It’s pretty ridiculous in this day and age that Civilization has Nintendo-level abysmal support for asynchronous play. The games often take 40 hours to complete solo and even longer when playing live so asynchronous play is the only way that makes sense to play a game.

This time around there’s a website called Giant Multiplayer Robot to handle passing the files around. Before I’d run a program with Civ IV to make it work more easily than emailing the games around, but GMR makes it extremely easy. You just install its client and authenticate with Steam. Then it lets you know when you have a turn to play.

First of all, a quick reminder that my Game of the Year doesn’t necessarily have to come out in 2012.  Because I don’t have the time to dedicate to video games, the price premium of buying it new rarely makes sense to me.  So my Game of the Year will be my favorite game that I played in 2012.

As I compiled my list I realized that I played a lot less games in 2012.  I may not have played a lot less hours (I haven’t bothered comparing the totals with 2011), but I definitely had a lot less variety.  A lot of that has to do with the birth of my daughter this year.  Only as the year has gone on have I been able to carve out some time here and there to play story-based games.  In addition, I resumed pursuing my master’s degree in the fall, right around the time I was able to have a bit more time to myself.  I didn’t have any gameplay at all in March, September or October.

Civ V (11 Hrs) - talk of the expansion pack made me want to play some more Civ.  I played a scenario and then I played a regular game.  I had a blast and I can’t wait to buy the expansion pack.

Peggle Deluxe (5 hrs) - Worked on some of the challenge puzzles

Team Fortress 2 - (3 hrs) - played when the Pyro pack came out.  Really enjoyed the new mode.

Got a little bit of time to play games while waiting to do midnight feeds.  I’ve already spoken about these games a bunch of times, so it’s going to be a short post.

Civilization V (2 hrs)

Team Fortress 2 (2 hrs)

Cities XL (1 hr) - fun, but I can’t wait for Sim City 5 to come out!

Peggle Deluxe (1 hr)

Final Fantasy X (36 hrs) - I started playing this game again to get away from computer games.  It was hurting my back to sit at the computer.  I could just stand in the guest room, where the PS2 is. I hadn’t played for months or maybe even a year, but I hadn’t gone that far in the game, so I wasn’t too lost.  (Unlike when I finished FF7 and didn’t even remember what the point was) I’m still not done, but it’s already knocked Assassin’s Creed II from long-time position as my #6 most played game raptr.  It’s already taken me longer than Final Fantasy IX.  There’ll be a review once I finish.  I’m so close, but the final boss keeps kicking my butt.  I may need to do some more grinding.

Civ 5 (70 hrs) - In March I fired up Civilization V for the first time since 16 Nov 2010.  What was the catalyst?  My wife asking what happened to all the enthusiasm for the game when it first came out.  Well, as I’ve mentioned before, right after I got the game I played it for a week straight.  Then I went on vacation to the Grand Canyon, to NYC for Halloween, had Thanksgiving and Christmas at my house, and a stronger focus on my webcomic.  Her question reminded me of how much I loved the Civilization franchise.  So I started playing and was reminded of why I loved it so much.  It took me most of the first game to get back into the groove with Civ 5’s new quirks, but I really appreciated the improvements to AI.  Civ V is now my most played game with 117 hours.  (Finally surpassing Civ 4)  Most of that time was added in March as I got sick and spent a few days home.  The achievements in Civ 5 really played a key role in keeping me interested over so many hours.  I did things I never would have done in order to get those achievements and now I have a much better understanding of how best to use those Civilizations.

I was on the phone with my dad a couple weekends ago and he asked if I was playing Civilization 5.  He’d heard that Dan was playing it and was surprised that it was still around and Dan and I were still playing it.  I told him I was playing it and reminded him that it was he who indirectly got us stuck on the series.

Back in the old days of the early 1990s, no one gave a second thought to sharing computer software with each other.  Most people didn’t know about the public Internet or BBSes so, for the most part, there was no onerous digital restriction management (DRM) to keep people from sharing software.  Some games had codes that you had to type in which were found in the manual, but manuals could be photocopied - after all, there were no authentication servers to connect to.  I’ve spoken about this before, but those early “wild west” days lay the seeds for my software purchases over the last decade.  A friend lent me 3.5” disks of Sim City 2000.  I played that sucker everywhere.  I’d take it wherever there would be computers and install it there to play until my parents said it was time to go.  To this day, I’ve bought all the mainline Sim City products and expansion packs.  So, who’s to say that today’s illicit software users aren’t building up affinities for software brands they’ll be loyal to when they have the cash.

To finish up talking about the game I left off in my last post, I won my first civ 5 game via conquest - a new one for me.  I usually turtle and do a culture victory or science victory.  It was only near the end of my time playing Civ IV that I started to become comfortable with domination victories.  I ended up with a score of 2679, a score I have yet to best.  The way the ending is now structured makes it easy to miss the old charts and graphs they’d always make you click through.  So on that first game I missed out on finding out what historical leader I compared with.  And, there doesn’t seem to be a way to access that.  Other thoughts from this first game include that the construction pace feels a bit slower (like less buildings units built in a game) and Dan concurred once he played his own games.  Great people now make their buildings outisde the city.  This makes using them to make their special building more of a strategic process than in Civ IV.  Great artists make monuments and those could end up obliterating a farm or some other tile modification.  A final fun bit of art imitating life: in this game the Americans had taken over middle east.