I suspect I know the answer to this already, but...

I should confess something before going any further. I am a Civ addict, starting with II and continuing to the current version, although I have yet to buy Warlords. No other game surpasses it, and I return to it every few months with the devotion of somethign enmeshed in a dirty but HOT HOT HOT affair, in a fervor that no other game inspires, although Arm and WoW have in the past.  I will play Civ for devoted, obsessive HOURS. I know far too much about the intracacies of the game and how specialists and cultural victories work, in that baseball-stat-nerd sort of fashion.

One of the things you can do with the game if you're a TRULY hardcore Civ nerd is use the editor.  And I'm thinking about doing it and setting up a version where there are some magical wonders and technologies and buildings, and then playing it out and using the resulting game to create the back history for a fantasy world. This would:

* provide a very usable rough history, including major historical figures and dates that are exact to the year
* auto-generate terrain that could be used in a story/novel
* make me think out an entire history in a way that's easier to do it than from scratch
* let me learn how to fiddle with the editor
* let me release a free version tied in with the book should it come to fruition, which I believe is kosher with their licensing, particularly if anyone can fiddle with it as they will
* generally be wicked fun to do

Major disadvantage?  TIME.  I figure 20 hours to create the new version, and another 20 to play it through.  Might have to play it through, then tweak, then play through again. YOW, that's 60-70 hours.

So is this cat vacuuming or actual research, gentle readers?