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Everything you need to know about leading a country you can learn from Age of Empires II

Now I don’t mean how to conquer the world. 

It was only in the past year that I learned I’d been playing Age of Empires ‘wrong’ this whole time. Apparently it wasn’t a nation builder or large scale game of sims or banished [aka, the way I played it]. Apparently you were supposed to play hard and fast, get in early and cripple the opposition as quickly as possible. That was the competitive way to play.

I’m not that competitive. 

Sure I want to win, but it became apparent to me at an early age that my win condition is not the ‘correct’ one. 

See, Age of Empires was one of the first games I ever played. At the time it was the most amazing and beautiful things I’d ever seen. Four year old me used to spend hours lining up all of his troops in front of the wonder just right. I was always a sketcher and a scribbler, so Age of Empires was a way for me to make something beautiful, in this case more beautiful than I’d ever be able to make on my own. I remember receiving a huge sketch pad for my [sixth? seventh?] birthday and immediately covering the first page in a drawing of a blue catapult and spearman attacking a red wall.

Politics at it’s most subtle.

When Age of Empires II arrived at our house I was spellbound. Little carts that could turn into trebuchets? Castles bigger than wonders in the first game? Funny little recordings on the trumpet menu? Female villagers?!

Age of Empires II gave me the opportunity to live out my most glorious kingdom building fantasies. I laid houses meticulously, spreading dizzying mazes in every direction from my town center. I ringed my castles with layer upon layer of walls and towers. I set aside the most exquisite locales for my eventual wonders.

And I lost.

Over and over again.

You see, I hated wars.

Fighting the enemy was stressful to me. I didn’t want to see my soldiers die. I didn’t want to kill their little men and women. I didn’t want to burn their fields down. I didn’t want retaliation in the following days. I wanted to build my cities, farm my fields and grow my civilization in peace.

The AI didn’t.

The AI wanted to conquer the world. It did not matter how peaceful I was, how merciful in victory or ingratiating in defeat, no amount of tribute could stop the implacable computer from doing what it was designed to do; crush its enemies and listen to the lamentation of their women. Unless of course I became its ally, but that’s a whole other blog post.

The point is, it doesn’t matter how virtuous, peace loving and refined you are or think you are if you’re surrounded by people, nations etc. who want you dead and/or gone. I kept my villagers from using the other players’ resources; I didn’t want to chop down their oh so pretty forest or dig up all their gold. The computer didn’t care. They chewed up everything they had and sent villagers to chop down my pretty little national parks. I’d sculpted my society into a marvel of trade and religion, with so much gold produced from selling food and pouring from my relic-packed monasteries that I could endlessly rejuvenate my wood stockpiles, and thus keep my farms running indefinitely. The computer didn’t care. The computer sent trebuchets and petards to blow my paradise sky high. From my ivory tower I looked out at the myriad little nations pounding each other flat, I took pity on the underdog and sent them roughly ten thousand of every resource. They quickly bounced back from starvation and drove back their enemies. Then they killed their enemies to the last civilian, then they came for me.

My point is that treating all peoples as human beings is right and just, but treating them all as merciful, peace loving peoples is stupid and self destructive. I recently realized the perfect example of this in real life, that being Israel. Israel is simply a superior nation to every other around it. Their culture is more loving, their military among the most merciful and precise on Earth [to the point that they literally dropped millions of fliers and sent thousands of phone calls to warn civilians out of strike zones] and they have created an exemplary history of compassion and courage in all their efforts.

Despite this, every nation around them wants them dead, and has unceasingly sought to wipe them off the face of the earth. Some people say that “If Israel would just give the Palestinians their own state war in the Middle East would cease!”. 

There’s just one problem.

Israel offered Palestine its own state five times, and every time Palestine said no. This is because the Palestinians do not want their own state. They do not want to live in peace with Israel. They want Israel and its people dead and gone. They have refused peace five times over, slaughtered innocents by the hundreds of thousands, bombed civilian targets and sent suicide bombers to commit atrocities against one of the few truly virtuous nations in the middle east.

This is simply because not all cultures want peace.

Not all cultures are beautiful, unique collections of wonderful individuals.

Some cultures are terrible.

A peaceful nation has three choices when faced with such cultures; it can allow them to rampage unchecked and destroy the peaceful nation, it can ally with the terrible culture, ensuring its own safety at the cost of watching innocents die, or it can fight back, and protect what’s good from violence and insanity.

Israel is a peaceful nation, and I believe it’s made the right choice.

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