I found this conversation in a recent movie and painstakingly transcribed it.   It’s by one of my favorite directors, and I’d put off watching this film for a long time.  I think far more people will recognize the game than they will the movie.  Can you name the film?

“I conquered Thebes.”

“When?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“How’d you do it?”

“Well I got a little more than that actually…I ruled this land for 97 years and uh…and uh…I had like…I had all the sanctuaries built and then the uh…this hot lava leaked out of a volcano and half destroyed one of the my sanctuary to uh Demeter I guess it was and uh…but I didn’t have the marble to rebuild like the sculptures and to fix the sanctuary.  But I already had all these um docks to like Calydon and Argos and I had everything…I was trading to like twelve cities.  And uh I had a I had a really good army but um the river the river had just flooded and it flooded out like four of my docks and I couldn’t import the marble to rebuild the sanctuary and she got Demeter got really pissed off and so she made my fields infertile and so I couldn’t grow the grass I couldn’t grow the wheat to feed the horses and there was nowhere for the sheep to graze and the goats, and then the people were getting hungry and restless, and I couldn’t trade because the rivers had flooded.  So Knossos, one of my vassals, got really upset with me and turned against me and they uh attacked me and because I couldn’t train any sheep because I didn’t have the wheat, I didn’t have the uh, I didn’t have a uh…”

“You couldn’t train any sheep?”

“I couldn’t train any horses because I didn’t have the wheat…and so when they attacked me I just got they just dogged me, and I actually went to send my army out to defend the city, and like you can only send them out if you have twelve trained horses and I had eleven.  So I was one horse shy of saving the city.”

“So then you didn’t really…”

“Well I had conquered—I had just conquered Thebes when that happened.”

By the way, I really, really, really liked this movie.  A few days after watching it, it’s still with me.