Well, it’s my second column and I decided to write about something that was posted on the Elixir Boards. Red October started a pole, which asked how we planned to play Republic: The Revolution. It got me thinking about the different styles that we use to play games. I generally tend to start out trying very hard to be a good guy but somewhere along the way end up turning totally evil. Let me explain.

Not so long ago I began playing Black & White again. I had formatted my hard drive since I first installed B&W so I was starting from scratch again. After setting up my creature, I decided to jump right into a skirmish game. I decided to take on two other gods and after loading, began to convert the towns around my temple. All was going well, I was casting rain all over the place and my people were getting everything they needed. My creature had learnt several spells and I decided to start spreading my influence and showing the world just how nice a god I am. The green god (the other one was purple) had already started nicking my trees so I decided to take over his towns first. I had just introduced my creature to green’s when my good adviser started ranting on about how I should save my people who were dying. I zoomed out to find that purple god was burning my people with lightning. After quickly casting a shield spell I decided to change my attention toward purple’s towns. I had enough support to allow me to reach a fair way into purple’s territory, all the way to his temple actually, so I set about getting my revenge. I cast a lightning on his worshippers at the temple and mega blasted all of the town centres I could reach. I continued casting either lightning or fireball on purple’s closest town until I noticed that my hand was a bright red. My temple looked pure evil by the time I finished that game and sinister music seemed to follow me around everywhere (not sure whether it was in my head or in the game).

This seems to happen every time I play this sort of game. I mean the evil robot chick in Deus Ex was in love with me before I had to kill her. This would also, I imagine, be the way in Republic: The Revolution. I can see myself starting out down the straight and narrow until someone pushes me to far and then I turn into evil incarnate, beating and assassinating my way to the Presidency. Maybe Elixir could put in a table at the end of the game to tell us how many of Novistrana’s population survived my tyrannical rise to power:

• Original Population: - 1,000,000
• Final Population: - 14
• Attitude of Final Population: - Make the Bad Man Stop!!!!!

by Joecorp