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#129 MICROPROSE SHOULD RELEASE THE CIVILIZATION II SOURCE DarthVeda pleads to MicroPROSE to release the source code of Civilization II. #128 MY LONG TERM LOVE AFFAIR WITH CIVILIZATION Father Beast fondly remembers of a unnamed game he, his older brother and stepfather played long ago. #127 THE "REAL" CIVILIZATION II Christantine The Great is appalled with what he saw as MicroPROSE milking off of the success of CivII. #126 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION Kent Wang divulges in his receipe on the elements needed for a truly addictive gaming experience. #125 CIV TO CIVII: LESSONS OF THE PAST FOR CIVIII Father Beast examines three key points that he feels are a must for inclusion in Civilization III. COLUMN ARCHIVE

So you begin the game. You are expectant, maybe a little wary. But more than that -- you are excited. Excited not only to be at the beginning of your fledgling Civilization, but because of what's already happened even before your first turn began: You DECIDED to begin AGAIN. There is power in that decision. You have reaffirmed your own life force and this is a rule: There is always power in the decision to begin again. The game allows you to express this power. This is why we play the game.

But WHY did you decide to begin again? Because the old way was done. It was tired. You had lost, or won. And then there was nothing left to learn. It was over. And then it happened. The same thing that happend to David and Odysseus and Hamlet and Alexander. Only it happened to you. You heard the The Call. The writer Joseph Campbell says it is The Call to adventure, to arms, to begin again. You'll hear The Call in your lifetime. Maybe to get a new job. Maybe simply to quit an old one. Maybe to move to Stockholm. Or up the street. In real life, it's not often you hear The Call. That's why it's important to listen for it. Many times you will hear it but refuse to answer it, and sometimes you will look back and wonder what would have happened if you had. In Civilization, you always hear The Call to adventure. And you almost always answer.

So you heard The Call. You made the decision. You watched the little globe spin a web of challenge for you while you waited in anticipation and now here you are. You have begun again. It was the right decision, you feel it. There were other times you knew immediately it was wrong. All wrong. You had wanted that extra settler to be there. Keeping you company, covering your back. And it was not. You were not lucky. This time it's not there again. But this time, you don't care. Because this time you sense your own potential.

The poet Wordsworth wrote, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting..." And so it is for your Civiliation. Like all beginnings (college, high school, the 7th grade, a new job, that moment about a week after you come back from your honeymoon) you find yourself alone. Alone and surrounded by blackness. Surrounded by the unknown. Your little settler blinks. A single light in a dark forest. So easily snuffed out.

Ten thousand years ago a shaman took this journey, and yesterday another took it again. Into himself. Where he found mostly darkness. As lost as your little settler. Surrounded by the unknown, you immediately stake out a place of your own -- a settlement appears. This is the life force of your civ, the womb that reproduces and keeps reproducing, that you might discover what lies buried in the darkness around you. The music you hear is tired, but that familiarity is comforting to you. It draws your militia out as he walks over grassland and gold-filled mountains, ever further into The Mystic...

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About the author (self-quote): "Raingoon coined the acronym "EC3," but can't remember what it stands for... "

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