Sometimes the guys play games solo. This is one such tale of Will playing Rise of Nations on his own.
Will took the Americans as he usually does and took to the Himalayas map to assault four AI. For once it wasn’t a matter of turtling for him, as he built up quickly with a focus on felling his foes, probably with nuclear weapons. The early stages saw Will fall behind in the territory game. He pumped up his economy as always though and pulled even by using more advanced forces. i.e. Gunpowder vs. Medieval arms. Who would you bet on? Exactly.
He took most of his first enemy’s land just as he edged into the industrial age, giving him a massive territory-for-oil boost. That made overrunning his second challenger even easier, especially since he finally had his nukes. Using them aggresively and in quantity was fun! Unfortunately this would not pay off in the end.
His last AI though proved to be a beast. By now he had researched the Artificial Intellegence mod for instant-build units, but so had the AI. They faced off multiple times, but even with Will’s nukes it wasn’t getting any easier. He watched cautiously as his Armageddon counter ticked down with each successive nuke, eventually reaching ‘1,’ meaning the next nuke would end the game with no winner. That means Will had to wipe out the remaining AI with conventional means – and for Will, that meant allot of riflemen and machine gunners.
Now, let me fill you in one what had been going on while Will was playing RON. This whole time, Bud had been watching, patiently. He was trying to be involved, conversing with Will as he played… but he kept falling asleep. He would wake up some when Will would ask him a question, only to chime about whatever he was dreaming. One time he dreampt he was filling in Will’s holes he digs in Minecraft – a common problem – and when Will said “I need more citizens,” meaning in Rise of Nations, Bud said, “it’s for safety,” referring to his dream. Needless to say, Will had a small WTF moment.
Bud dozed off completely a few times and eventually told Will he needed to call the rest of the day off because he couldn’t stay awake. Will told him he’d wrap the game up quickly but the last AI was being a pain in the ass. Almost two hours into the game the last baddie wouldn’t fall, and with Bud asleep on the couch, Will decided he was going to end with a bang – he fired that one last nuke. Armaggedon hit, and he enacted the first rule of Chaos is Gaming: if we can’t win, nobody wins.