- Tom's Life Strategies Part 3 : Choose your faction

Options...so many options! 

About every strategy game will begin with the same choice: choosing your faction. Ofcourse if you are fresh into a game this is probably just a random choice, only by playing will you know what race/faction/country will suit your gameplay the most. I always like to imagine how people decide what they will be trying first, while all they have are vague impressions and can only judge  from instinct. Maybe you just like the colours of their flag? Maybe you just go with whatever faction is displayed most prominently on the cd case?  Maybe you are a bit pervy and like to build all sexy female units?And yes I had a friend who openly admitted that he played Night-elves in Warcraft 3 exclusively because of that... I might have some pervy friends.

Would this be a reason to choose a faction to you?

Maybe you do like I do and just watch the unskippable intro video and choose whatever faction looked like it had the best tricks up its sleeve? My sister would probably just get the one that looks like it might train ponies and has the brightest colours. She is 19. (On a sidenote, she doesn't even like playing games, just watching them over my shoulder. She somehow loves it when I use a faction that has a bit of a girly side to it.) Personally I like to see some stats before I just take of and just hope that those troopers are as awesome as they appeared to be in the introductional video.

Just recently I discovered one of my new favourite games: Age of Empires 3. Why it's one of my new favourites? All the standard game bullshit aside, "it has a nice balance to it" or" I really enjoy the rpg elements" blahdieblah... The thing I like about it the most is that I can finally use my own country as an ass-kicking faction! The Netherlands is usually just cast aside as part of some greater allied union and not even mentioned in history's sidenotes. Not this time! Seeing my country as part of this world is really cool, even when I'm playing other games like Rome Total war I just like rushing to the place where the Netherlands are going to be founded ,t was apparently called Batavodorum at the time, and claiming it for my own. 

So obviously I didn't have to think long and hard about what faction I wanted to start of with this time. In time I might turn out to be playing some other faction way more than the Netherlands, but I will do my best to master their gameplay and unique advantages. 

• The big question

But what is most common in strategy games, is totally random in real life. Obviously my choice stems from the fact that I was born and raised here. But what if you were allowed to choose what country you were born in? Let's just say for the sake of imagination that you are not allowed to live in your current country. BUT you are allowed to choose whatever time period and, optionally, be born in a country from on your games. So what would you like to see? 

As for me, I'd love to see the cities of ancient Greece in combination with the creatures of The Age of Mythology. The Greek are founders of about all major Western civilisations as we know them today. I could learn things like speaking Lating and handling a sword, perhaps even slaying some Minotaurs while I'm at it! A visit to the Ancient Spartans would be awesome, just to see if they are the ancient hardasses legends claim them to be!

Just look at dem hot zebra chicks!

And last but certainly not least, think about a party in the honour of Bacchus.. So Kratos, you still wanna worship the God of War? Fine by me but, I'll choose Bacchus, the God of Wine anyday! The god of booze, drinking, partying and promiscuous women.. now that sounds like my new Homecountry!

Tell me what you think in the comments! And if you feel like it, tell me where you would like to live if you had the option to choose as if life were a game!

TLS