Building Rome in half an hour

Well, if you make it an hour, then its not just building Rome. Defending it, destroying it and then having a discussion worth a dozen PhDs and at least three history books about the causes behind the fall of Rome. Yes sir, all three bags full, within the span of an hour or so. Welcome to Age of Empires! :)

You see, there is always a good intention behind a lot of ideas people come up with to help 'education'. Someone had come up with an innovative concept called the Preparatory Leave or PL in engineering colleges, to allow people to 'prepare' well for the exams. Basically, this was a period of about seven to ten days after the classes ended and the exams began. Somehow, this ensured that most people considered attending classes during the rest of the semester futile and the PL was deemed sufficient to cover the entire syllabus. It became a bragging point that you had finished reading through three whole chapters of a book overnight and answered questions from the whole book the next day at your exam.

Of course, more people present in the hostel all day long meant that the general noise levels were higher than normal, to put it mildly. Frequently over the Public Address (PA) system, you would hear "Abbe &*%!^%^%@@@## (collective noun denoting all residents of the hostel) give me my #&@$^&#@!! (umm shall we say, lovely?) electronics book back". This was being shouted by one lost soul who has suddenly remembered that he actually owns the sole copy of most popular book in the hostel. And more study meant more work meant more hungry souls. So the night canteen would open and you could see people loitering around the canteen in pajamas or lungis (depending on what they were doing last before they came there). And then, of course, there was the game called Age of Empires.

After a few days, we discovered that this game, Age of Empires, could suddenly make you get into a room while its the evening, and then when you come out its broad daylight. Not to mention the feeling of guilt attached to it and the sleep that followed. Since there was no cure to the addiction, we decided the best way of using it would be to define a time when we would play. We decided that the best time to start playing would be 3:30 am onwards. (Yes it is a.m. - you read that right). Around 2:45 or 3:00, people would shut their books and start showing up at different places. Strategies would be discussed furiously, alliances formed, army versus navy civilizations chosen. By the time it was 3:25, the whole hostel would be agog with excitement. People who owned computers were suddenly in great demand. Either they would be shoved out of their own rooms, or they would insist that they will also play. And then the games would begin.

Have you ever had a geek at a computer weaving magic with the mouse and keyboard and at least five people cheering him on, shouting instructions, etc? Well, it happened there. It used to be frenzy. Spies would surreptitiously go into other players' rooms and check out their troop positions (on their screen). Or they would go out with little offerings like "if you attack him after 5 minutes, you can take him". And of course there were people like me, who would go and do little things on my own computer to bring the entire network down if my team lost a game. Or if someone wanted to stop their computer from being used, I could go in and change a few things here and that would stop the game from working temporarily. :D Villages plundered, castles burnt down, forests cleared, entire armies sunk in transport ships... ahh the joy. :)