In my previous post, I mentioned that I was in the process of overtaking the entire world. However, Frederick was delaying my progress. He continues to take over my smaller, weaker cities, but I am rapidly destroying the Egyptian civilization. Hatshepsut has no clue what hit her. My modern armor tanks are zooming through her cities, destroying them with ease. I find it to be advantageous that I am taking over major cities while losing smaller, less important ones which serve no purpose to my progress. As soon as I destroy Hatshepsut, however, those small cities that were taken over will be mine once again. Frederick is dealing with seven different kinds of smoke...and I feel that realtively soon it is going to destroy him.
A concept which I actually took notice of while playing this game is the concept of opportunity cost. While at war with these two powerful civilizations, I suddenly realized that I need to spend more time on my military if I want to end up defeating Frederick. What would help me more in the process of owning the entire world: building a courthouse to help my economy or building a modern armor tank in order to protect my cities and take over others simultaneously. If I have the protection, I will be able to hold off the enemy until they are destroyed, and then I can focus on my economy. This has to deal with the comparison of guns and butter. Thankfully,
my economy is already strong due to the attention I dedicated towards it at the beginning, so now I am able to devote much of my production towards guns. One must be very careful in the approach to this, however, for if you produce too many guns without focusing on butter, you're economy is a hell hole. However, if you focus on butter too much and do not pay attention to your military, you can kiss your civilization goodbye. From an ideal perspective, one would achieve productive efficiency (as I did), receiving as much output as possible from a certain amount of inputs/resources. I would recommend that the concept of opportunity cost be carefully watched, for it truly plays a key role in the success or failure of your civilization.
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Paul, I have had the same dillemma so many times in relation to the 'guns and butter' concept. I tend to start a lot of conflict and have warfare as a constant strain on myself. One things I've found that has kept me completely above water (and people who have read me will be tired of hearing soon) is making strong allies before goping into a battle. I try to bring the posse in to easy the relative stress on my military as much as possible. With thias help I can focus a lot of time to elevating my economys wartime abilities. If the need be that I need to up the percentage of available time to militaristic purposes. thus more guns. I try also to have another partner in trade to help me out with certain resources if I happen to run out one in my own sphere of control. Do not get over confident also. You seem to me like you can more than able deal with the Egyptians but do nont over-estimate them because if you half-heartedly attack and rely on your vast army they may pull a spartan victory and send your game into an unknown timeframe; no reason to lose. But in the end, as long as you don't get dumb you're fine.
P.S.- Guns and Butter trade offs are never easy. You aren't alone.
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