Celestialization V: Brave New Friendship
Chapter 1:
Game Start
Hi, my name is James, and I shouldn't be up this late. No, seriously, I was suppose to go to sleep two hours ago, but just one more turn!
Civilization V is one of my favorite games. Just recently, my friends and I got back into it, and I don't know why I ever stopped playing it. My friends and I have played many games that lasted at least three days. But, that was in the past.
Right now, I'm searching through the Steam workshop looking for some interesting mods to break or spice up the game. Honestly, the base game is getting rather boring and repetitive.
Oh, that looks interesting I quickly move my mouse to click on it. It’s a mod that enables trading posts to grow into towns and give more wealth. I'll definitely try this out later, Subscribe.
Continuing to browse through the hundreds of pages of mods, I suddenly wonder if anyone has made an Equestria mod. That would be interesting. Yes, I love MLP! I discovered my love for it one night when I was bored and wanted to laugh at something. So, I searched up My Little Pony and began with episode one expecting it to be terrible.
Well, one episode turned into one season, one season turned into six seasons, and, now, here I am, a MLP fan. All my friends know this because I told them about my little journey into "insanity" as the Internet so wonderfully calls it. Nevertheless, they’re still my friends... I think?
Anyway, I'm getting off topic, sorry. So, I search up Equestria and, low and behold, a few come up. One is for the vanilla version of the game, one is for the expansions, and there are a few others. Since I own the expansions, I click that one. I read up on the benefits, and it is just as expected.
Unique Ability: Inspiring Friendship: +15% Great People generation per ongoing Declaration of Friendship (your friends also each get +15%). +1 Culture and Faith per turn from each friendly City-State, multiplied for Era.
-Unit: Wonderbolt: Replaces Fighter. Available at Flight and uses Horse instead of Oil
-Building: Weather Factory: Replaces Factory. +1 food on many tiles, but no production bonus.
This is really good I click [“] subscribe [“] to add it to the mods folder. Just as I am about to click off of the page to continue my search for more mods, I notice a recommended collection, Brony mods. Huh. I wonder what this is. Click
It pulls up a page full of pony civilizations! Crystal Empire, New Lunar Republic, Changeling Empire, and so many more. You name it, and it was probably there. To me, it’s like a goldmine. I can create so many scenarios with these mods. It’s unbelievable. I subscribe to all of them, and since I hadn't played against AI's in a while, I decide to try and recreate the MLP world in-game by choosing every civilization that was an empire in the show. There is one exception, which is the Cult of Equality. I decide to include it for fun because I think it would be interesting to have Starlight's little cult as a nation.
I setup the game with me as the Equestria, obviously, and the AI's taking the role of the rest of the environment. Unfortunately, I can’t find a map of Equestria to change the terrain, but the AI is more than enough.
Because I am about to start a new Civilization game, and it will be a few hours before I pause and go to bed, I get up to turn off the upstairs lights. My computer is on the second floor of my house, and if the upstairs lights are on, my parents, should they get up for a glass of water, will know I’m still up. We can't have that now, can we?
After turning off all the lights that could possibly give me away, I sit back down in my chair and press start game. The little loading screen pops up with the letter that every civilization has while loading, and then my computer turns off. What happened?
I get up from my chair and drop down on my knees to check the wiring under the table. All wires are plugged in and everything is in place. According to the wiring, everything should be working perfectly! How is this possible?
I stand back up and try pressing the power button on the computer, but nothing happens. I spend a few more minutes trying to figure out what is wrong, but I’m baffled. I am just about to give up and go to sleep when, suddenly, the monitor goes from a black screen to displaying TV static.
"What on earth?" I whisper out loud
I check under the table again to see if anything had changed, but nothing had. I then look back to the monitor with my very confused face. I slowly approach it, and reach out my finger to touch the static-filled screen.
Just as my hand is about to make contact, the screen switches from static to a glowing bright light. It is so bright that I have to cover my eyes with my arms in fear of going blind. After a while, the blinding light dims slightly, and I am able to open my eyes again.
Once my vision adjusts, I become aware of the fact that I am not in my room anymore. In fact, I don't know where I am right now. As I look around, all I can see is white. This is really weird, I must be more tired than I thought
“I'm probably passed out in front of the computer right now," I muse with a laugh. "This is the weirdest dream I've ever had... Maybe I'm lucid dreaming?"
I try to manipulate the white space around me, but nothing happens. I sigh. This has got to be the most boring dream ever.
"Loading Procedure Started" states a robotic voice.
I jump back as a loading screen appears everywhere in my vision.No matter where I look, the screen is there! It is just a blue screen, like you see in Si-fi movies, with a little spinning loading bar in the center and a percentage indicator above it.
8%
Wait... what's happening?!
12%
I frantically look around, hoping to see something that will tell me what is going on. But, it's really hard to see anything when there's a loading screen in your face!
18%
It's okay, it's okay! I'm sure I'm just asleep, and after this bizarre dream ends, I'll wake up in the morning and forget this whole ordeal! With that thought in mind, I take a deep breath, sit down on the white "floor," and wait for whatever happens after this loading screen reaches one-hundred percent.
22%
27%
It’s crazy how real this feels, though
32%
37%
You know, this has got to be the slowest loading screen I've ever had to literally sit through.
40%
48%
Generating World Seed
Suddenly, the loading screen shrinks a little bit, and in the top right corner of my vision, comes another screen. This screen has the same background as the loading screen, but also has one giant hexagon that is centered on the screen and is filled with other mini hexagons. Inside of these hexagons, are numbers, which are constantly shifting and glitching between many other numbers and symbols.
56%
This is really cool! I try to get a closer look at the screen in the top right corner of my vision, but quickly run into a problem. Since the screen is in my vision and not physical, there is no way to actually get closer to it.
70%
*GUI Generated*
The loading screen and the hexagon screen begin to flicker rapidly and, then, just disappear entirely! Where did they go? Did I crash my dream?
Slowly a ton of completely different screens begins to appear in my vision. In the top left of my vision, an HP bar slowly begins to fill up. In the bottom right, a blank map appears, and in the top right, a ton of stats such as research, income, culture, and population emerge into existence. Oh look, a happiness bar just formed in the bottom left.
As I sit there examining the different screens and stats that have appeared, I fail to notice another screen, which appeared behind me.
This is so cool! But, what does it all mean? There is nothing around me that can answer that question.. I looked around again to confirm my conclusion and notice a new physical button behind me.
I eagerly stand up and make my way toward the button. Now, when I say physically there, I mean it is just like a hologram. It isn’t in my vision, but actually is there! Floating! The white background makes it difficult to read, but I can just make out the words Start Game
"Start Game eh?" I look around the white room in which I have been sitting, watching what were probably hallucinations of loading screens and numbers, and I decide that pressing this button might, at least, make this experience a little less boring.
Hmmmmm. Should I press it? Even though no one is around, I make a show of thinking really hard about my answer. "Press," I say as I dramatically move my hand and press the floating button.
Generating Avatar
Wait, what do- Suddenly, my entire body begins to glitch and spasm. I don't know what's happening anymore but I one thing is for certain, it really hurts! Who knew having your body literally glitch in and out of reality could be so painful! I think I'm gonna... black... ou-
Population: 126
Guards: 24
Food: +16
Happiness: 3
Production: +2
Science: +6
Culture: 12
Gold +8
Turn 1
Game Start
