Allegiance

The goal is simple. Build a civilization that will stand the test of time. Your tribe is your heart and your cities, your children. You nurture them like a mother does to her child, and defend them with your soldiers should invaders decide to posses your precious lands.

It was fifteen years ago when I first learned of a computer game that hones one's logic skills. The name is Civilization and to journey back into the fringes of stone age only to twist the plot of humanity's common story is the selling point of the game.

So there I was in front of the computer screen, with my first city and my first soldier exploring the terrain. I could have gone and raise an army that would invade an AI's defenseless city but I chose not to. Instead, I decided to build a settler that would improve the land around my capital.

Such choice would be my guiding principle as I played the game over and over, and with each new reincarnation, the doctrine never fails. While others prefer invading lands belonging to another people, I build roads and irrigation tiles for my tribe to grow. Instead of legions and chariots, I construct libraries and temples for my cities to bloom. I go to war in the name of peace, and when strife happens, expect the cause being an AI doing a sneak attack on one of my unsuspecting cities.

You may find my pacifist tendencies a little too Utopian for a reality driven simulation. But let us not forget, Civilizations grow because of technology and to acquire a new science - especially from a rival - is worth a thousand spears. I may not be the conqueror type, but expect my technologies to be the envy of my enemies. While foes employ catapults to knock down walls, I use cannons to blast fortifications back to dust. And while propeller planes are used to bombard my cities, expect a nuclear missile or two to be used to destroy an enemy capital.

In the end, world domination was never my calling. I could leave the other tribes killing one another. While in the cradle of my civilization, components to be used for the first starship to leave the planet for its first journey to Alpha Centauri are being assembled in orbit.

It was mere a computer game for many: A crafty device for self distraction when nothing else could be done to kill time. But in a span of years and countless hours of playtime, lessons learned from nurturing a tribe shaped an entire personality. I may define space as domain more than anyone else, but when I close my eyes and lift a page in history to reveal an event in time, that is where the game proved most useful.

From Sumeria of the Fertile Crescent to last month's World Cup in South Africa, I know where to find the human connection.









But I wonder still, if Civilization is a multiplayer game and I found your city just beyond the next hill several tiles away from my capital, would I make peace? Would I trade my Alphabet for your Masonry and exchange diplomats the moment I discover Writing? Would I let you live in peace, or put my chariots outside your domain in preparation for a sneak attack?

I have a hidden desire for allegiances and I would rather keep your cities as a buffer should rival tribes appear past our realms. But knowing how much we have in common - in how we grew up and develop our civilizations - and maybe even in our very way of life, perhaps I would have done more to ensure the growth of your nation.

In our world, it is hard to find someone like you.

Belated maybe our first contact, but who knows, if we have met a long long time ago in a virtual world that shaped our lives, I might have placed my chariots at the edge of your border to guard against the hordes galloping from the north and make sentry, as you attend to the affairs of your tribe.