Moving On Up to Victory!!

 Exchange and Trade in the Era of Ramses II

The civilization I decided to use for the rest of the semester is that of Ramses II. I chose this civilization for the fact that I have always had a deep interest in Egyptian culture and want to see how the Civilization 5 game manipulates history. I picked this civilization as well because I have always thought that it was one of the most advanced and cunning societies. I wish I would have been able to get the version of the game that inserted religion so I could have seen how that affected the game alas I was no able too. I hope that the more life progresses in the game some of the belief systems will peak through.  I enjoy the aspect of getting to live out my days as an Egyptian citizen, something I would love to have experienced. Where’s a time machine when you need one?! The victory approach that I am going to try and achieve would be the cultural victory. For the longest time I thought one of the ways to win was amazing the most land so I purchased a lot of tiles, turns out this isn’t true but hey I have a lot of land to use so that’s a plus.

In the game civilizations prosper by advancing up the technology tree and gaining culture. They prosper when the citizens are happy and well fed as well. They suffer economically when they are not producing any products that other civilizations want or need. I have experienced that barter plays a large role to make your allies happy. I have had to give up 250 gold coins multiple times to other civilization in a trade negotiation for peace and ability to cross through their lands. I have also gifted my units to city states. In order to stay in a city states good graces you can also connect them to a resource through trade, something I haven’t been able to do yet. You prosper more economically depending on the resources that you find, produce, and steal as well.

There isn’t any local exchange as far as I have seen in the game thus far. There is some regional exchange however. You can connect cities to cities and the produce created in both helps them. Exchange progress quicker with the advent of roads because the traders can move with more ease. Trade post can also be built, caution though is that is takes away food but does add gold.

As technology advances the ease of production and trade gets more efficient. The more advancements that are made the more wealth that can be brought into the society. Networks-economic, trade, and otherwise play a large role in the Civilization 5 game. Without these means of interaction the game would be null in void. Exchange of material and cultural goods is the bones of this game. The deeper one gets into the more you begin to realize that cultural difference and exchanges of different ideologies and acceptance are a big part.

There are not however any presence of pastoralists exchanging animals for grains from herders. All of the trade is city to city or city to city-state. As mentioned previously ecological disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, and earthquakes are not present so they don’t effect trade and exchange. I have also noted that they aren’t any raiders or burglars that try and steal goods for exchange.