Zen Mind is discribed as that period where you are doing something new; things are fresh and the possibilities endless. We've all experianced it the first time we play a game like CTP2. What works? What dosn't? I thought archers could defend better. Look at those Sameri go!

Its later, when you've developed your "stratagies", that the game begins to stale. To me, nothing was more pathetic than twenty years ago when kids would play pacman with their "maps" on the console beside them.

Anyway, my playing around with the game (the Coracles, the riots, and the taxation levels) leaves me to realize just how modifiable this game is. And changes to the game files often show up in the game. New attack values for the Coracles showed up in the displayed unit strenghts, but not the encyclopedia.

So picture this - before the game, you run a simple program that rewrites the files. Many of the elements of the game (attack factor, defense factor, and movement) are now randomized within certain bounds. For example, would your stratagy change if hoplites had a defence of 12? 20? How about if Sameri only had 150 movement points (one square normal, but a little faster movement on roads). What if nukes ranged only 10 squares, or 30? Suddenly the game is different (and new) EACH TIME YOU PLAY IT.

I might actually write this up myself - any simple language with a randomizer could do it. Really, what I am waiting for is to see if the AI issues are fixed. Currently this is a good game that falls short of greatness becuase the AI does not push as hard as Civ2.

And once the AI issue is cracked, there is no reason why ITS values could not be randomly created each time as well. What if you gave a war and nobody came?