Yes, I know it's way too late for this. It's been almost 2 weeks since the holidays ended, but of course, better late than never. To Miss Wiwin that will perhaps be reading this tomorrow, I'm sorry that I've only posted this now. I've procrastinated a lot and my lazy, apathetic self has apparently got the best of me.
All is well now though and so in this post, as the title itself has suggested, I will be talking about my holiday experience, even though honestly there's actually no meaningful nor memorable holiday experience to speak about. For the sake of this post though, I'll do what I can to describe what I did during the holidays in a very (hopefully) interesting manner.
My daily routine during the holidays consists of me getting up at 4 am to perform my morning prayers, after which I'd go back to sleep and only wake up at 9. What I did for the rest of the day is fairly predictable for those who know me well. I spent hours and hours in front of my computer playing games, watching films, surfing the internet, and skyping and chatting with that someone :) till late midnight. As you can see yes, there's nothing important to talk about. Granted there were times where I did spend time with my family outside but they're all pretty cliche and insignificant so no I'm not going to talk about them here.
So, in this post I'll just talk about this one particular game that I've spent hours and even days playing during the holidays. It might bore you to death but for lack of anything to talk about, please bear with me.
EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV
Yep, that's the game. Europa Universalis IV. In English, it would mean "Universal Europe 4". Weird name for a game, isn't it? That's what I also thought at first back then in 2008, when I discovered EU III in some random obscure gaming website. I was only 10 years old then but I was already fascinated with what the game provides, however complex and difficult to understand it may be. Europa Universalis is a real-time strategy game that gives you the ability to be the ruler of literally any state in any time period from the 14th century during the Middle Ages to the 19th century post-napoleonic era. Playing the game gives you almost infinite possibility, you can choose to be the tribal leader of the Shawnee tribe and change history by leading your fellow tribesmen to a somehow very unrealistic but very interesting possibility of discovering Europe and alter the path of history to one that only exists in your mind, or perhaps you can choose to be Napoleon himself in 1805 post-revolutionary France and finish what he had failed to succeed in achieving: Conquer Europe.
Those are all but very few of the many things you can do in the game. The game's central themes which are warfare, diplomacy, nation-making, colonization, trade etc. really fascinate me. I've always been fascinated with history, politics and economy in general so getting to play this game, which gives me the ability to imagine myself as this powerful statesman leading his country to greatness is something that has always kept me interested in this game for almost 8 years. During the holidays I spent hours playing as Prussia starting in around 1630. In just a few decades, with the use of both warfare and diplomacy (okay I did use cheats as well) I managed to alter history by conquering all the other German states and unify Germany as a single nation-state with me as emperor. I created the most powerful and modern army in the world, able to defeat any country that dares oppose my will. I reformed the bureaucracy and taxation with the help of my very apt and capable merchants to build a very powerful backed mostly by income gained from trade in the North Sea.
