In the year 3,991 A.D., the world is a hellish nuclear wasteland convulsing in the throes of a 1,700-year war.

An enterprising Reddit user has been playing the same game of Civilization II for ten years of real time and thousands of turns after scoring a victory in the typical 20th-century timeframe. Thanks to the military primacy of nuclear weapons and their horrific effects on the environment (and diplomatic relations), the three remaining empires have been locked in an Orwellian stalemate for millennia.

As the author of the original post, Reddit user Lycerius, states: "Big cities are a thing of the distant past. Roughly 90% of the worlds population (at it's [sic] peak 2000 years ago) has died either from nuclear annihilation or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm. Engineers (late game worker units) are always busy continuously building roads so that new armies can reach the front lines. Roads that are destroyed the very next turn when the enemy goes. So there isn't any time to clear swamps or clean up the nuclear fallout."

Because it's the Internet, the Reddit community has rallied around this fictional dystopia in an effort to solve the apparently intractable problem with a dedicated subreddit and hundreds of posts theorizing possible strategies. Have an idea? Share it with the world at large here, but don't be surprised if some grognard with a thousand hours of Civ II playtime shouts you down.

"I wanted to stay a democracy, but the Senate would always over-rule me when I wanted to declare war before the Vikings did. This would delay my attack and render my turn and often my plans useless. And of course the Vikings would then break the cease fire like clockwork the very next turn." Lycerius writes. "I was forced to do away with democracy roughly a thousand years ago because it was endangering my empire. But of course the people hate me now and every few years since then, there are massive guerrilla (late game barbarians) uprisings in the heart of my empire."

I don't think I've ever thought this before, but let's all hope that Sid Meier was wrong. I do not want my descendants being conscripted into the Everwar with the Neo-Vikings.