My favourite computer game of all time is Sid Meier's Civilization II. Civ 2 improved on the already brilliant Civ 1 to create something that is very close to perfection. But even perfection, I believe, can be tweaked a little, which is why I'm proposing these extra rules to make the game even better. I present them here in the form of Civilopedia entries.
(Note: some of these rules may already have made it into Civ 3, and if so, I apologise. I've been avoiding Civ 3 for the good of my health and social life.)
GOLF COURSES are large tracts of artificial countryside created for the entertainment of the city's more prosperous citizens.
The sheer volume of goods produced after the development of INDUSTRIALIZATION created a hitherto unforseen problem: there were simply more goods available than anyone needed. MARKETING is one of the techniques devised to ensure that the goods are actually paid for (the other technique is GLOBALIZATION.) The goal of all MARKETING is to convince people, generally by dishonest means, that their lives are somehow deficient unless they buy the product being marketed. It is frighteningly successful.
SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS allowed an almost miraculous increase in the speed and volume of global communication, which is a very good thing. Unfortunately, it also allowed SATELLITE TELEVISION.
Most modern-day SPORTS were originally developed in British military public schools, to ensure that when the boys were not partaking in military pursuits, they were at least partaking in military-style pursuits. To this day, competitive SPORTS retain traces of their military past, from the 'chain of command', to the notions of 'proving yourself' and 'pushing yourself to the limit', to the notion of battle against an enemy. MARKETING has convinced billions of people that they actually care about all this stuff, turning SPORT into the new RELIGION.
MYSTICISM enjoyed something of a renaissance in the later years of the 20th century, with millions worldwide putting more faith in astrology, hypnosis, spoon-bending and spiritualism than they put into reason and common sense. One reason for the popularity of the new mysticism is that it is often accompanied by superficially impressive but meaningless technobabble known as PSEUDOSCIENCE. Combined with MARKETING, this has enabled con-artists the world over to turn people into hopeless dupes.
Without AIR CONDITIONING, Florida would not exist as we know it.
From the mid 20th century onwards, the outskirts of most cities began to be choked up with SUBURBAN HOUSING ESTATES, massive developments consisting of nothing but semi-detached houses, all given spurious template names like "Sunny Bay Drive" and "Antelope Crescent". HOUSING ESTATES are usually very poorly designed, and are a major cause of desperation, crime, boredom and suicide. The only reason they continue to be built is so that a load of landowners, property developers and politicians can cash in.
SATELLITE TV NETWORKS offer the consumer hundreds of channels, all full of the same anaesthetizing crap. The cumulative effect of hours of talk shows, game shows, 'reality' shows, commercials, soaps, sitcoms, sports reports and news reports is to turn the viewer into a kind of animate vegetable, incapable of any kind of protest.
Journalists are generally a craven bunch who will parrot back whatever claptrap they're told to; but nevertheless, as human beings, they still have a habit of occasionally calling things as they see them. This can be a problem during wartime if journalists don't see things from the military point of view. In the 2003 Gulf War, it was realised that the best way to make journalists see things from a military point of view was to put them actually in the military. Here they can safely report without danger of revealing anything that deviates from official propaganda.
The first modern OLYMPIC GAMES took place in Athens in 1896, amid much sentence-making about 'bringing nations together' and 'the joy of taking part' and so on. A number of athletes, segregated according to their nationality, engaged in contests of running, jumping, throwing things and similarly worthless pursuits. The format has stayed the same ever since, but in a dramatic reversal of their founding aims, the OLYMPIC GAMES have become a focus for more xenophobia and naked competitiveness than any other spectacle on earth. The Games are also a showpiece for just about every MARKETING organization imaginable, who, together with the drug-pushers who peddle steroids and HGH, are the only ones to make money out of the Olympics.
MEDIA MANIPULATION is an art pioneered by Josef Goebbels in the 1930s and perfected in the early 21st century by Rupert Murdoch and other media moguls. It involves concentrating the ownership of almost all media channels in the hands of a small group of people, who can then control public opinion by feeding people lies with one hand and facefulls of cheap candy with the other. The hallmarks of MEDIA MANIPULATION include half-truths, hype, selective reporting, and weaselly use of language; but its central tenet, as Goebbels realised early on, is the Big Lie: an outrageous untruth repeated so often and with such conviction that people have no choice but to believe it.
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION pose a very real and grave threat to civilization itself, and any empire suspected of building them can be justifiably wiped off the face of the Earth.