On LinkedIn
My ten-year-old is the richest king on the map, and he is sure that makes him safe.
We play Civilization VI together, my two sons (eight and ten) and me. Absurdly complex, and almost nothing pays off this turn. I love that they pick it anyway. I love the talking even more. I explain, I ask why, I coach, and I never push. I also want to win, so if they ignore my advice, fine by me. Roughly my day job, minus the part where I want them to lose.
They play exactly like themselves.
My youngest goes to war with whoever “is really in my way and makes me angry”. Last weekend he won a battle. It took forever. Then he looked past the rubble and discovered the AI he had just beaten had more cities. And an empire. And now it was angry too.
My oldest builds his economy. Trade routes, gold everywhere. But gold does not fight. When the armies show up, he needs production to turn that money into walls and soldiers, and he does not have it. You cannot buy a castle in one turn.
Neither of them plays the real game yet: holding the walls today while you grow strong enough for tomorrow.
Most security budgets I see play like one of my sons. One buys whatever the last incident was. The other is sure the money will become protection the day it is needed.
It will not. Production takes turns.
So which of my sons runs your budget? And which one were you at ten?
For anyone wondering what “production” means outside of Civ: everything that turns money into defense. People who are trained, controls that are deployed and tuned, segments that are already drawn. None of it can be bought in the week of the incident.
Quick test: pick your most critical system and ask how long it would take to isolate it today. If the answer starts with “we would have to figure out”, that is your production problem.
(For the record: next game I am going after the oldest. He has been warned. Sort of.)