Jump 104: Civilization

Jump 104: Civilization

Era: [-100] Ancient, 4,000 BCE
Identity: God-King
Drawbacks: [+1000] Full Table (x12), One City Wonder, Backed By Nuclear Weapons!

[100/1900]  Methodology: Economic
[200/1900]  Methodology: Science
[Free]      Accepting The Divine
[250/1900]  Let There Be Light
[400/1900]  Primitive Screwheads
[700/1900]  Realm of Myths
[750/1900]  Silk Roads
[900/1900]  East Indies
[1200/1900] Industrial Complex
[1250/1900] Tabula Rasa
[1400/1900] The Enlightenment
[1700/1900] Tech Tree
[Free]      The Hanging Gardens
[1900/1900] The Library of Alexandria
[Free]      The Colossus
[Free]      University of Toronto

Speaking of Gilgamesh and Uruk... building tall a second time over when starting a civilization from nearly scratch is not a simple task by any stretch of the imagination. This of course is increased by the dozen other nations that stretch across the planet. But when you can subvert Babylon at the title screen in order to stick with Sumer, so to speak, that is of course the superior option.

The trick to making this work, of course, is firstly location. Fortunately, that's easy; in the grand scheme of things Uruk will end up being a sprawling metropolis in time, but for the moment, moving it downstream for its founding is the ideal solution. Building it where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers meet the Persian Gulf is really as close to ideal as one can get, there. And from that point... the ball starts rolling.

Really, the name of the game is ingratiating Sumer to the other nations, keeping our collective heads down while they go after bigger fish. Technological advancement, as painfully slow as it is easy on, is absolutely a must; the other must is trade. Diplomacy is the art of making sure you can bribe other nations to overlook you, and occasionally trade tech with you, while trying to push things as quickly as you can.

And Uruk flourished under my leadership.

Of course there were bumps along the way. Roving barbarians gave way to distant nations wanting to start trouble for fun, and they found that even though Uruk was a single city, it still supported a sizeable military. It was at the cutting edge of technology, though regretfully not so insanely far ahead of the rest of the world that it could be anything like some silly and awful comic-book hidden nation that won't be named here for fear of a copyright strike. But it was enough to keep outsiders at bay, to keep the city growing at a rapid clip, and keep the coffers relatively full.

Uruk had its niche carved out well. It never was a premier world power, of course, even though it was able to (usually) hold its own effectively; it did however have a bit of a reputation for being able to pull off audacious actions against those who would trouble it. As the centuries passed, several of the larger nations had tried to cause trouble, only to find whole armies encircled and wiped out while they were on the back foot, or that their cities abruptly had mysterious problems and disruptions, or to find that roads in crucial locations had been ruined overnight by artillery fire.

But for the most part - aside from nukes starting to fly around in the modern era, for which Uruk basically only survived by playing HARD at diplomatic efforts and tech trading - things went reasonably. For the most part, anyways. However, toward the end, the power blocs began breaking apart as its members began bickering at each other. Things began to look grim.

Which is why, in 2060, Uruk launched its citizens into space and to Alpha Centauri.

By the time they got to their destination, there were no signals being received from the mother world except for derelict satellites, forever retransmitting static test screens and waiting for orders from the dead world they orbited.