Rise and shine

Flu time.

I have been down with the flu for the last eight days. Now I am a coughing mucus machine. Quite an improvement from my previous status of febrile pus Niagara ;-)

Anyway, I haven't done a single thing in a week. I was too tired to read or talk. My social interactions have been limited to the Pickle, whom I have met for lunch once, more on that in a later post, and the local convenience store cashier to get my daily three litres of water and a family pack of tissues.

As I took some Sinutab, I have been living cat days: sixteen hours of daily sleep, interspersed by bouts of confused action. My sleep pattern is utterly screwed now.

So, what have I been doing, beside sleeping? Mostly using tissues. Then I listened to some Rameau. It would have been a nice time to start on the latest Iain Banks but my concentration was shot. Speaking of Scotland, I do not have spirits at home but I do have a few gift bottles, already wrapped. I had to make myself a grog before starting on Sinutab, and opened a gift pack. It was my favourite: Ardbeg. I decided not to make a grog with it and just have a glass. My nose was so ruined that I didn't even smell it.

I also tried to play "Empire Total War". It was a gift I received a year or so ago and never installed. I do not have a dedicated gaming machine, and my computers running Windows are all somewhat out of date. I gave it a try on a two years old laptop, the setup went well and it runs adequately with some graphical options turned down, which is fine by me.
I am a long time Civ games fan and I really like the TW series. The TW designers usually do a great job to incorporate age specific challenges in a well designed game mechanic.
Rome was great, and Medieval a big disappointment, mainly because they completely screwed the crusades. Anyway, I haven't been that far in the game, but here are a few things I have learned:
- keep at least one year of trade revenue at hand: it will help you go through a blockade;
- try to keep your army expenditure below your taxation revenues;
- make friends;
- keep at least two fleets: blockade busters and blockaders;
- money is the name of the game: always build;
- once you start on building, always build to the max;
- during a war with a major nation, first interdict enemy trading ports, then its military ones. Use your ground troop to either smash its if it is weak, or use cheap ones to devastate its towns, starting with the happiness enhancing ones, force it to spread, use your rakes to bomb its happiness enhancing building. Once it can no longer afford to rebuild them, push it into bankruptcy by devastating its economical base. Of course, you should really try to make peace before that, because there is no turning back once at this point and your enmity reaches epic levels...