Then the monks I had summoned appeared, three of them in a line. They moved calmly into the road and began to chant in a resonant basso profundo. And that's when the miracle happened. The shouting invaders stopped just shy of the militia, put down their swords, and then—well, they joined us. No blood was shed. God was on our side. I don't know how to explain it.

In fact, there are a lot of things in the video game Age of Empires II that I don't know how to explain. Oh, I'm sure the answers are in the manual, which sits by my keyboard, dense as a novel. Maybe next time I'll learn why moments later, while I missed out on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the real world, this little village I had built was destroyed by a second wave of invaders. My monks tried to repeat their miracle but were slaughtered. A message appeared on the screen. NOT ENOUGH FAITH TO CONVERT ENEMY. What? You'd think that first battle would have reinforced their faith. But in Empires, faith is a resource, like wood, grain, gold, and time, that gets used up.