Civilization- Barbarians Page 3

Amzlat had told me that the people he was giving me to lead were real people. Maybe it wasn’t the best trait and maybe a good offense was the best defense. But anyways, I always liked to build tall more than wide. And this would protect me against an early hard loss, and probably protect me much later on, since nukes were mentioned.

  I selected protectiveness as the trait.

  And then, after being asked if I was sure I was satisfied with my choices, I prepared to enter this new world.

  Chapter Three

  Oh Noble Cuddles the Destroyer — Liam Neeson’s voice sounded in my ears with a mischievous sarcasm that was never present while he voice acted Civ 5 — You have been chosen to lead the Atari clan. They are a race of spiritual elves who have been bred to serve in the temples of the great guide Amzlat, providing him with the spiritual energy that he needs to fuel his grand, mostly failed, stratagems. This—” Wait a moment, the lizard who sent me here had mostly failed? “—tribe served his mostly failed lizard deityness, in the sky temples of Artoran, a beautiful stunning vista, high in the mountains of Markor, where despite the altitude they yet grew forests of trees, amongst which these elves worshipped and frolicked endlessly. When Amzlat’s enemies attacked and crushed his empire in a mere matter of a few hours with nukes, mech robots, lasers, and weaponized cat memes, and other vastly high tech toys of a world in the vastly post information age, he was able to transport this fraction of his people from one of his great holy places into a world yet in the Stone Age. And with them came a human man, who had been tasked to guard the great sky temple of Artoran, a warrior of the name of Marcus, deadly and trained to perfection and a high level.

  The elves who you shall rule at present know nothing of the great and high technology of the vast, yet ancient empire they once were beloved subjects within. They were priests, whose lives were spent in contemplation of Amzlat’s great good greatliness. Neither do they know any ancient technologies, other than fire and basic stoneworking.

  They do know that.

  And how to pick up sticks and use them as clubs. And they have yet that knowledge which allows humankind to throw rocks, one person at another. But they don’t know how to make stone walls. Or wooden walls. Or any walls at all. They know nothing of the art of sword fighting, nor of the art of archery, nor of the art of horseback riding. They actually don’t know anything of any military use. Neither do they know the secrets of writing, for that was stripped from their minds in the transition, as being a matter too advanced for this universe-server. However, you will be able to discover those secrets with far greater ease than normal, as they used to spend long, long, long hours staring happily, in the tree boughs in the legendary hanging trees of the great sky temple of Artoran, at the endless printed texts of the holy words of the great God Amzlat, and in so doing giving a boost to his, as already mentioned, mostly failed schemes.”

  Good god, the system was not only a dick to me, it was a dick to the lizard wizard who sent me here. I began to have a sense that the system was perhaps a little annoyed with Amzlat for not succeeding with these already repeatedly mentioned failed schemes, of which I was the latest. Not a good prospect for my survival.

  The loading screen added that Marcus also had no knowledge of any technologies, as they too were too advanced to be used in this universerver — a neologism I decided to despise.

  Wonderful, one warrior to go with my elves, and he was no doubt trained to use super laser guns and power armor, and would be almost as useless as the elves when danger showed up.

  The game finally let the simulacrum of Liam Neeson stop talking. I hoped it switched to Leonard Nimoy from Civ 4 whenever I unlocked techs, or culture perks, or whatever I was going to unlock. Live Long and Prosper. That would be good luck in a situation that I now had a frisson of real worry about.

  Chapter Four

  And in the beginning, and at the beginning, there was no cut scene.

  Instead I looked down at an isometric field from far, far above. It was more like a zoomed out map of an RTS than the hex grid of civilization.

  There was a collection of tiny tents below that were camped in a large clearing on a hill looking over where a wide sluggish river flowed into a tame softly surfing ocean. At least the river looked sluggish. I couldn’t really tell. It was like I was looking down on the landscape from an airplane. Except I could actually see the ground without peering over the chest of the annoying person who got the window seat, and then I could actually look straight down, instead of at the wings.

  The camp was helpfully marked “settlement”.

  In my opinion, the “settlement” was still a little lacking in the permanent buildings required to deserve that august title. It was surrounded by a tall vast primeval forest extending as far as I could see in all directions. This forest grew both across the river and on this side. I tried willing my point of view to scroll around, like I’d figured out how to will the letters of my name to appear. And as I willed, where I could see changed, scrolling eastward along the river, until the camp fell away, no longer visible beneath me. The entire way I saw more, and more, and yet more trees, speckled with clearings and with large dancing icons of deer. However the land beneath became vaguer, and spottier the further from the camp I went, and eventually the view disappeared into a blank fog beneath me.

  So far, so normal for a game.

  Clearly I had to send out scouts further before I could see more of the world.

  That would be one of the first tasks. Intelligence is always vital for making choices, and there was a good reason that the standard advice for Civilization was to build one to three scouts as the first move.

  The goody huts, of course.

  But actually it was more important to know where to expand, where your future victims lived, and what victory strategy to follow, what luxuries and strategic goods were available, and what the land in general looked like.

  I wanted to see everything that had already become visible at once, so I willed the screen to zoom out further and further until I could see the entire green and blue patch that had already been explored. Forest everywhere. On the edges in a hemisphere to the west, north and south were the peaks of mountains in the distance, outside of the area that my people had explored. It seemed we lived in a giant river valley formed with mountains defending our boundaries.

  To the east was an endless ocean.

  Along the seashore there was a little cartoon of giant lobsters clacking and walking around, and a few kilometers further down was a cartoon of a giant clam. Out deeper in the ocean there were cartoons of fish leaping up, and one cartoon of giant whales breaching the surface on the edge of my vision.

  Clearly these represented the bonus resources available around my starting location. Of course whaling was not a very progressive or environmentally friendly thing to do. I’d probably do it anyway, but that was a decision for a later date.

  In the woods little cartoons of mighty deer, with implausibly giant racks of antlers, tangled with each other. And on the slope of the mountain there was a cartoon family of beavers looked around worriedly while one nibbled at a tree trunk. There were also spots in the woods marked with apples, and to the south of us, at the edge of the explored range, was a clearing with a cartoon of a herd of cattle wandering around, and I could hear, as I paid attention to it, exuberant mooing.

  At least Amzlat landed us somewhere with good resources.

  I was willing to bet that the strategic resources I could not yet see of iron, coal, copper and the like were hidden somewhere in the mountains or under the forest. It made sense to me, all of that contemplation my elves had done of his lizardliness must have done some sort of good for his ability to make sure we were dropped here in a good starting spot.

  I hoped.

  When I focused on the deer icon nearest my settlement, a string of little green apples appeared, with a slider that currently was half full allowing me to change how many workers were assigned to hunting deer, and another a line that said: Numb
er of deer available [?]; Sustainability of current use [?]

  Cool. It had no idea how many deer were there.

  At my thinking this, the tooltip changed to Number of deer available: More than a hundred, probably. Sustainability of current use: Eh, at least a week or two.

  Hahaha.

  There probably was some way to unlock the statistics so they would actually be useful. Though, slightly to my surprise, there was no popup at this thought telling me exactly how to do it.

  I looked at the crabs along the shore, and a tooltip appeared that said I needed to know how to construct sailing boats to gain the food from that source, and that further, the output would be increased if I built a lighthouse.

  How much area was in this basin that we’d been settled in? As soon as I desired to know how distant the mountains were, a thin line appeared between the mountain peaks and the hill the settlement was built on. The nearest mountain peak was directly to the west, jutting out from the rest of the mountain range, thirty kilometers away. Its peak was covered in snow. I felt a pull to explore it, and an instinct told me there was something valuable hidden in the mountain that I would like to find.

  The rest of the mountains to the west stood in a line that started forty kilometers away, and bent outwards further to the west in a gentle curve in both directions, before about sixty kilometers away they bent on both sides back towards the east. To the north the line of mountains disappeared into invisibility, while to the south I could see the peaks almost eighty kilometers away almost touch the barely visible sea shore.

  We were on the south of the river, and if I could eventually control this whole territory I’d have powerful natural barriers to enemies.

  The river itself was more than a kilometer wide. That would protect us from invaders coming from the north, who would need to find a way to cross the river before they could hurt us, which seemed likely to be beyond the talents of barbarians, while from the south the mountain range would block enemy invaders, allowing me to easily defend my little basin.

  Of course the Romans had been quite sure their mountains would stop Hannibal. And India’s mountains hadn’t done much to stop Muslim invaders from Afghanistan…

  In the future, when we’d grown to control this whole area, I’d need to have some system in place to watch for enemies coming through the mountains.

  As I tried to do the math in my head, the system helpfully informed me that my basin south of the river covered about 3,000 square kilometers, with another 5,000 kilometers in the visible area to the north of the river.

  That wasn’t very big, as countries go. For comparison, I remembered from when I once tried to memorize the sizes of countries, because for some bizarre reason I thought it would make me more literate about global affairs, that the size of Switzerland was about 40,000 square kilometers, England around 130,000 and the United States was about 10 million square kilometers.

  One of those numbers is bigger than the others.

  But this would make a respectably sized city state with a large rural environ. I would eventually expand out of this basin, but this would be a good resource-rich center.

  There were hundreds of tiny figures in the settlement that I could somehow perceive far, far down below, and they had green tags superimposed on them in a way that did not interfere with my ability to see them.

  My field of vision was like if I looked at the world through a camera lens. It was a big square, and the image was crisp and clear everywhere. On the edge, rather than fading out with peripheral vision that gets worse and worse until it is nothing, there was a sharp clear edge beyond which I could not see anything.

  I’d once heard being blind described as seeing from the front of your head like you see from the back of your head. Sure, weird analogy, but it let me understand the basic point that blind people don’t see just black, they see nothing.

  My vision cut off at a discrete point, and then around it, it was like there was nothing there. It wasn’t like that area was covered up and black, it simply was gone. There was no processing of that visual input.

  This felt really, really weird.

  At least it was better than my unknowable period as a detached spirit.

  I zoomed in towards the settlement until my point of view hovered about a thousand feet over it. The people looked a little like the sprites in a city builder RTS as they walked around far beneath me. A date marker stood on the upper left corner of my field of view proclaiming that it was 1032.2.35. I at least thought that was the date, as helpfully next to the number was, “Spring”.

  I wondered what the winter would be like. But at least the thick forest and the giant sea should produce a moderating effect on the weather.

  I hoped.

  Was this “world” even a spherical planet?

  It might not be. Maybe it was a flat square with a wrap around like some games I’d played.

  That was a trippy thought.

  And a matter to worry about later. Now I needed to figure out what my first orders would be.

  The forest at least meant there would be plenty of wood for heat for a long, long time. We would need to prepare for winter. The land was richly green and flowering now in spring, and hopefully the winters would not be too fierce.

  The instant I thought that I winced, worrying that I had jinxed matters. The system could read my thoughts, and I suspected it was a sadist. Perhaps right now it might be preparing to send upon us the most horrifying winters imaginable for the sick amusement of some group watching this “game”.

  When I first travelled to Europe, coming from the land of sun, surf and sunburn in SoCal, I had not been prepared for the winters in the middle of the continent and a thousand miles further north. I did not intend to make that mistake again.

  Even if I would not feel the freezing breezes when they came.

  I looked at the tents, and a stat page with all of the information about what my tribe owned appeared. 934 people. ? dogs, ? tents, ? pointy sticks of wood, ? stone axe heads, ? stored deer meat...

  Well that was useful. Thanks.

  I really wanted to unlock more statistics.

  In the corner of my viewfield a big exclamation point started blinking yellow.

  I willed it open, and sure enough a popup appeared. This time it was narrated in Leonard Nimoy’s voice, proving decisively that my idle thoughts could be read by the system, and that it was very good at imitating voices.

  Set up your council of advisors, and meet the leaders of your tribe

  Many functions of your community will only work if there are people who are responsible for fulfilling those functions in place. Leaders. This isn’t like a game where the statistics just appear with no sense or reason to it. You are ruling a community which requires bureaucrats to run things. You love bureaucrats, right? Of course you do. Everyone loves bureaucrats and red tape. Ahhhh, the IRS and DMV. You already miss them so: But do not worry! You can recreate them, and chortle in amusement as they make your people twiddle their thumbs endlessly.

  You need a bureaucrat to count how many tents and pointy stabby sticks you have if you want to know exactly how many there are. Similarly you need leaders to run all sorts of things, or else they don’t happen. You can’t order everyone around one by one.

  There must be hierarchy!

  But you are the guiding spirit of these people. You pick who the leaders are. So learn about their different traits, switch them around, and watch them uplevel as leaders. It is like an RPG mechanic in a strategy game, and you loved that sort of leader management in Stellaris and the Total War games. So go forth, go forth and select your council.

  Quest: Learn about your great council

  Reward: Paperwork (as soon as you invent writing, so you can’t access the reward yet)

  Live long and prosper!

  Ha. Ha. Ha.

  Very funny.

  Once I finished listening to the popup narration, which automatically sped up to the maximum speed I could read instead of
being boringly slow, the biggest tent in the center of the little settlement started blinking with a yellow question mark above it, like a World of Warcraft quest marker.

  I willed myself to look at the question marker, and in a disorienting instant my point of view changed, and I was looking at the richly decorated interior of the tent.

  Twenty elves sat on a thick piled, richly woven red carpet, whose fibers glistened, as though the rich carpet had been made of a tight woven spider silk from a game and imbued with an enchantment.

  A lantern, glowing from no obvious source, hung from the tent poles, swinging slightly back and forth.

  In the center was a giant glinting gem.

  The gem they had gathered around was a deep blue and purple, illuminated from within, with quiet banked fires that seemed constantly on the verge of blazing out. To describe it is strange: We are used to seeing in video games giant glowy crystals. Sure, real precious stones are always small, and they don’t glow from inside, but it seems like every mage needs a purple glowy thing on the top of their staff that is the size of a human head, and every palace of skulls needs some giant crystals too. The unfriendly neighborhood dragon who you killed in his lair after reloading five times had some glowing gem that you could not actually pick up and piles of golden loot which were just part of the scenery.

  But these gems always look plastic, artificial, and pixelated. Even the best and most modern graphics completely lack the realness and solidity that a real gem has.

  Despite being as big as the torso of one of the elves who sat cross-legged around it, and having a light that flickered from within, the gem looked real. Like it had heft, like it would take five people to carry it because it weighed fifty kilos.

  Each face of the gem had a sort of translucent shininess, but some of the facets were unpolished, with whitish bits of granite around the edges. It looked like a cross between a geode and a diamond.

  When I looked closer at the gem, it opened with pictures of praying hands, and a bar with the number of workers assigned, like the bar that was there for hunting the deer. Except this one was full, and had a maximum of twenty people assigned.