Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Daddy Is But a Mere Mortal

Here's a little exchange that happened with my five-year-old a little earlier today. Totally out of the blue, I might add--I had no inkling this was coming.

Pillowfight Fairy: Daddy?

Daddy: Yes, dear?

PF: Can I ask you a question?

D: Of course.

PF: Would you sing the song O Christmas Tree in Spanish?

D: ???!!!


...



Anyway. Now that both my lovely bride and I have finished our respective games of Civilization, I'll be back to blogging my regular amount, hopefully starting tomorrow.

3 comments:

Anna said...

But, I need details! Did you both win? Space race, diplomatic, or what?
Hubby finished a game last night, winning a large map by way of space race, in somewhere around 1975.

Timothy Power said...

Yes, we both won. The details:

Tonya's game was on the Chieftan level, with a "small" "Pangaea"-style map. She won a Domination victory. She usually does. She nearly always uses the same strategies when she plays, and she usually gets bored of the game before the end. She finds the earlier part of the game, with all the technologies giving you crucial military units and city improvements, more interesting than the end, which is just a long, hard slog. So she just starts taking out her opponents until the game gives up. This time, it took her until the early 20th Century to do it.

My game (which took a couple of hours on each of three consecutive evenings) was at the Warlord level, on a Tiny Archipelago-style map, which appeared to be in an ice age. There was a large amount of tundra and icecap land that couldn't support cities, so I physically couldn't get enough land to force a domination victory. So I won a Conquest victory, in (I think) 1947. It was a bit of a challenge, because it was all Naval action; I had to build up a huge fleet of frigates and galleons, in addition to the land forces needed to storm the cities. Logistics was much harder.

So. Are you by any chance one of those people who's been anticipating the release of the game "Spore"? From what I understand, it's looking to be a lot like Civilization in many ways--you design what your end species will look like, then you guide it as it evolves from microbes to a sentient race, then as it evolves socially into tribes, kingdoms, and empires, and eventually out into space. I don't know a whole lot about this game, but everything I've heard leads me to think it would be just as dangerous to our family's "together-time" as Civilization is.

Anna said...

Most of my games start about like Tonya's. I don't like to fight, though, so I win by UN vote or *ahem* time. lol If Hubby is looking over my shoulder, I can manage a space race victory. I want- no, need!- to win, so I play small enough that it's not too much of a challenge. To me, it's not interesting if I'm losing. ;)
Hubby usually plays a bigger map, more opponents, fights much more, and still usually wins by way of UN vote or space race.
I haven't heard of Spore yet. I agree with your assessment, it would risk family time.
Other games we've played- Age of Empires (eh, too much graphics, not enough meat), Caeser, and Heroes of Might and Magic (SO much fun!).