Art Immitating Life

Whiling away the day with Civilization V (thanks, Steam sales!) and I'd been thrown a campaign as George Washington.

I'd prefer a British-centric theme, but sure, I'll bite.

I'd soon encountered a couple City-States, they gave me little bits of gold as a "oh hi there don't invade us thanks" gift, and I walked a unit over their border thinking I was "safe" now. They didn't take kindly to that and I soon withdrew my next move and said sorry, things were going well.

And then I met China.

They opened up a pact of friendship, and while they were not powerful I still felt that we could better benefit from coopperation, both mutually and on our own. A win-win. And other countries I soon encountered after I looked to the seas agreed on this, all offer friendship and accepting me with open arms. Sure, they all seemed to have a problem with the French and were claiming they were shifty bastards not to be trusted, but whatever. I left them to whatever they wanted, I was just sure to not open up my borders to them. They seemed to have subtle little hints of strategic planning in their requests. Maybe it was them telling me it was for strategic battle plans that got me thinking.

China though were wanting to be best-buddies. Opening up offers for mutual research, so we could better ourselves and advance onwards. Sure, they'd occasionally ask me for gold, resources, freedom to have their armies enter my lands and walk about. It's all in the name of friendship.

Even the Ottoman Empire joined in; since I was having such a good relationship with China, and China asked if they'd be friends, they signed up. And we all skipped happily into the future together.

A few of the City-States had little squabbles but they cleared up after a little time. I didn't get involved, because they'd mostly all had allies and people protecting them, and fighting the wars for them. During this time I pushed on with research and science, a few wonders here and there, and my people loved me. We were secure and I even let my armies slack. We were safe with our allies all bound together with me as their figurehead, forging our bright destiny.

Except the French, whom nobody trusted anymore, and thought as pompus jerks.

Then around the 1960's, something changed. I'd noticed a few armed units of China up on my north border. There'd been a bit of hassle with one of the City-States up there, and it just looked like they'd helped out and left their units milling about, as there was not much else for them to do. The friendship pact expired and they'd requested our open borders agreement. It would be needed for them to go over and fix up that troublesome City-State that shared our border, but lay more to my side.

And then came the announcement.

China had confessed, they never liked me and had been using me to their own means. They turned their forces towards me, and released. Treachery! They had taken advantage, leeching off my research, abusing our supposed friendship, planting themselves in a position where they were posed to walk in and consume the fruits of my last millenium-long labours. In one turn, they'd taken out the General special unit that I'd placed up there and had begun on my tanks and infantry. I'd become complacent with the end in sight and me at the helm and was now paying the price. So much for thinking they'd be different in this game.

After helping out China, sharing research, they'd turned and thrown it back at me. I was dumbfounded by the irony of it all. I could maybe fight back, but it would take a couple turns to be ready and by then they'd easily have eaten, digested, and crapped out enough of my nation to prevent me from bounding into the space race and instead hobbling to invent velcro or something.

I reloaded up from 20 turns back, and checked back at the research tree. The nuclear weapons were but 14 turns away. There's an axiom I want to test...