12 ms·

Civilization: 25 years, 33M copies sold, 1B hours played, and 66 versions

252 points by blammail 11y ago

acheron 11y ago
I like how so many of the posts in this thread are "[this one] was the best!", but I'm pretty sure I've seen all 5 of the main games held up and possibly one about Alpha Centauri too. I'm sure when Civ 6 comes out we'll have people complaining because it's not like 5 or 4 or whichever one was their favorite, but I like that they change every time. If I wanted to buy a new game every year that was the same as the previous one, I'd be playing Madden.
- tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
  All the Civ games are great on their own right. I know people that still prefer 1, 2, 3 or 4. The main reason I currently play only 5/BE is their far superior graphics and interface. And no stacks of doom.
technofiend 11y ago
Civ is hella fun but it doesn't scale well - massive games become untenable due to app slowness and memory footprint. I think this is in part due to Civ's design of each player gets all their moves consecutively, rather than in parallel. Although it would change gameplay Civ could take advantage of multi cpu by either staging decision trees based on likely actions taken by the player and other civilizations or creating multiple rounds of actions in each turn which are executed in parallel. This would have the added advantage - if "they" chose to code it this way - for hardcore civ players to offload compute to AWS or other services. I would love to crank up a world domination Civ game with 50+ entities that doesn't take minutes per turn. Wishful thinking for Civ VI but there you go.
- mserdarsanli 11y ago
  Yeah they should also use Node.js to make it more async and MongoDB for webscale.
  - technofiend 11y ago
    Sarcasm doesn't become you. :-)
touristtam 11y ago
The serie in its latest iteration is hugely underwhelming.
talles 11y ago
I used to play Civilization II... damn I feel old.
scurvy 11y ago
My first intro to overrun bugs. I couldn't otherwise have found myself yelling "effing Ghandi" so often.
ausjke 11y ago
first time heard of this, how does this compare to mindcraft? is this good for young kids?
tamana 11y ago
All I want is an orthogonal perspective UI with Civ I or Civ II rules, minus Civ I's bugs. I find the freeciv angled view unusable.
dinosaurs 11y ago
The Civ series has always been on my radar as they seem to be quite interesting games. I remember going through the tutorials of either 4 or 5 but I never really got hooked. Not for a lack of trying, but I just didn't know what to do in the games. I always felt like I needed more guidance or something. Are there guides out there to help learn how to play these games? I might try 5 again after reading this!
dudul 11y ago
By far the game I wasted the most time in my life :) Managed to kill my addiction and stop after Civ 4.
- kjdal2001 11y ago
  I haven't been able to kick the Civ habit completely, but I indulge much less frequently then I did back in college. I have told my coworkers though, if I come into work in the morning and look red-eyed and tired, its probably not because I was up late drinking last night. Its because I made the terrible decision to fire up a game of Civ at 9pm.
domtron_vox 11y ago
My father still plays civ 1. His windows 94 broke down a number of years ago. He was so sad about not having civ 1 so I set the game up for him in dosbox.
- scholia 11y ago
  Thanks. Downloaded dosbox and had nostalgia for lunch ;-)
- Pxtl 11y ago
  I get the appeal of simplicity,but why not try newer-but-still-simple Civ like Revolutions or something?
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    Revolutions was too simple for my taste.
    - Pxtl 11y ago
      Yes, but we're talking about Civ 1. Civ 1 is also much simpler than the modern games. Revolutions I thought was a good distilling of the Civ mechanics.
      - cmdrfred 11y ago
        Civ 1 still felt deeper to me then rev. It was ok, but I would have preferred a mobile version of Civ 1 instead.
phodo 11y ago
One of the greatest games of all time - recently added windows 10, bootcamp, virtualbox... just to be able to re-enjoy the original classic version again. Future versions don't do justice to the original.
ra1n85 11y ago
Amazing series. I still recall being able to recount all of the 7 wonders, all of the large Greek city states, and all that other countless historical context that the developers packed into the game that gave me a slight leg up in middle school history class. And of course I'll encourage my children to play someday. No childhood is complete without having to fight back Gandhi's unrelenting hordes of musketmen with stealth bombers.
- mikeash 11y ago
  It would be remiss to mention Civilization and Gandhi on a tech site without discussing why he was such a crazy warmonger. In the original Civilization, Gandhi's "aggression" rating was set to 1 to make him a pacifist. Except that when a civilization adopted the Democracy form of government, this reduced the leader's aggression rating by 2. The ratings were unsigned, so this wrapped around and gave Gandhi an "aggression" rating of 255 once he adopted Democracy. Oopsie.
  - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
    Wow - that's hilarious. I guess we should be grateful it was only a char ...
    - infogulch 11y ago
      The expected range for aggression is 1-10. So a max unsigned char makes Gandhi plenty aggressive.
  - em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
    interesting, I remember this happening and thought was odd!
  - hluska 11y ago
    You just solved a major mystery of my youth. Thank you!! :)
  - deciplex 11y ago
dcw303 11y ago
I came perilously close to failing several university assignments thanks to an unhealthy obsession with original Civ. And I loved every minute of it. I still play the newer versions now and then, but the original stands out as a paragon of game design. It was grid based, so unit movement was easy with keystrokes. That along with hot keys for everything meant that you could play a complete game without a mouse. This was particularly useful at keeping the endgame speedy. Something that I think is missing in later versions.
- LeifCarrotson 11y ago
  1B hours played. Think about your experience with a couple hundred hours, and then multiply that by a few million similar instances - how much productivity has been lost? Or how much history has been learned, friendships built, and strategy developed? Similarly, how many billions of hours have been spent browsing Facebook, for better or worse? I think one of the most important ethical questions we can ask ourselves is how can we write great gaming, working, and social networking software that has a net positive effect on the world through the hours that are spent in it.
  - jerf 11y ago
    1 billion hours played sure is a lot, in some ways. Of course, humanity racks up a billion person-hours now every nine minutes, so in another, probably more meaningful way, it's not much at all.
  - cellis 11y ago
    Think of this as many hours spent NOT learning homework doing rote memorization (or literally anything else unproductive), and I think you'll find it more palatable. Game playing, especially of the Civ variety, builds problem solving skills.
  - dcw303 11y ago
    You have a fair point in regards to responsibility. I'm guessing that I think similiarly to you that these experiences are subjective? One person's addiction with a 4x strategy game is another's gateway into a lifelong fascination with building complex information systems. One person's compulsive Facebook checking leading to depression is another's connection with family members when they're working overseas. There is an ethical responsibility in creating technology, but there are many shades of grey in how people use it.
pella 11y ago
free & opensource version: http://www.freeciv.org/ http://www.freeciv.org/ web version: https://play.freeciv.org/ https://play.freeciv.org/
- eru 11y ago
  You should also check out the first Master of Orion. The origin of the 4X name, and still one of the best examples of the genre. (There are fan-made patches available. Make sure to get them.)
  - scrumper 11y ago
    Since we're doing alternatives for Civ-lovers, I really, really enjoyed Galactic Civilizations II. It had the right mix of massive scale, diverse strategy, politics, and an interesting combat mechanic with user-designed units. Endgame is sometimes a bit weak, when it's obvious you've won and have to grind through a multi-hour campaign of genocide, but it's the only game that's come close to that feeling of depth and complexity I got as a teenager from the Civ series.
    - eru 11y ago
      I tried to like Galactic Civilization II, but in the end, I came back to the first MoO. For example, I don't care enough about micro-management to build individual things on my planets. Give me the sliders. Also, MoO's research system is still without equal: each playthrough different technologies are available (for each faction, and thus for the whole galaxy) changing the character of the game. Sirian wrote well about its charms at http://sirian.warpcore.org/moo1/ http://sirian.warpcore.org/moo1/
      - scrumper 11y ago
        I never played MoO so I had no basis for comparison. I should probably rectify that :)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
jack9 11y ago
After I graduated to dwarf fortress, I never looked back.
cmdrfred 11y ago
In my opinion this is the best game humanity ever managed to design. I've never played anything that I've enjoyed more.
minikites 11y ago
Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri are still the best balance of simplicity vs fussiness in my opinion. I like Civ 5 quite a lot but there's a lot of fussing about with the resources like horses or oil and there are a lot of edge-case city improvements.
- endgame 11y ago
  Given the amount of fussing required to get the most of Supply Crawlers in SMAC, I'm surprised to hear that viewpoint. Nevertheless, the scope of SMAC's vision continues to inspire: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ is analysing the canon and implications from the various quotes and project videos.
  - minikites 11y ago
    You're right that the fussiness is there with supply crawlers and some of the terraforming options, but they can be ignored. Civ 2 is pretty much perfect. Each terraform has 1 or 2 upgrades (road/railroad, irrigation/farmland, etc) and each city improvement serves an exact purpose with no "filler" improvements.
  - animal531 11y ago
    They take some manual intervention, but even at high difficulty level you don't really need to use them. What made SMAC great was how many different viable strategies there were (not that they were as well balanced as those in later Civ iterations). It was great fun to mess with other factions just by modifying the terrain and sea level.
brandnewlow 11y ago
I've played 1-5 extensively and Civ III is the most fun by far. Anyone know how I can get Civ III on a Mac? It's been "not available" here forever: http://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meiers-civilization-iii-complete http://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meiers-civilization-iii-compl... I've tried playing the Windows version via Parallels but it fails out during load.
- nicolas_t 11y ago
  Go here http://paulthetall.com/civilization-3-mac/ http://paulthetall.com/civilization-3-mac/ and follow the instructions. It's a wine wrapper that's already configured specifically for Civ III
- zyxley 11y ago
  Have you tried it with Wine? Wineskin (http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/ http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/) lets you package Wine installs as self-contained Mac apps, which takes most of the hassle out of it.
  - brandnewlow 11y ago
    I will give it a go!
- chadzawistowski 11y ago
  I have gotten it to run in Wine before, after struggles with `lsans.fot`.
  - sevensor 11y ago
    This is how I play Civ 3, and it works great except that it hangs on exit. Fine by me.
jcadam 11y ago
Played the original Civilization on an Amiga and have played every release since (including CivNet). Civilization II was easily the best game in the series. It's sad that Civ V, as pretty as it is, is so freaking horrible.
- goda90 11y ago
  Civ V with all the DLC is actually quite well rounded in my opinion. If you haven't tried the Complete version, give it a shot. It's not the same for sure, especially the combat. Maybe I'm just used to variation because the first Civ game I really got into was Call to Power, then followed by III and IV.
- increment_i 11y ago
  One of the greatest games of all time for sure. It's a pity that they also dropped the ball on a decent mobile version too - seems like the medium could lend itself well to a well designed turn based strategy.
  - thirdsun 11y ago
    My thoughts as well. Similar with SI Games' Football Manager. I just don't want a dumbed down version, but the full thing without compromises.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Let me guess, II was the first you played? Everybody has a special attachment to the first one they got addicted too. In my opinion II was the worst of the five. It was basically the same as the first with more of everything. More techs, more unit types et cetera. Didn't really add anything to the game except make it longer. It meant you couldn't finish a game in a single sitting which really lessened the appeal to me. Starting with III they started added more dimensions like religion and culture. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't but I appreciated exploring how strategies changed. Edit: did a really poor job of reading your post or else you edited it. Oh well, just pretend my comment stands alone, please.
locusm 11y ago
The way Civ let you email a multiplayer round was awesome when connectivity was an issue.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Lots of similar BBS games, like some versions of Empire for example [1], supported "play by mail" in various forms so they could be played on custom clients offline followed by uploading the moves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Classic
mattzito 11y ago
I started playing civilization when I was 12 or 13 (Civilization 1), and still, to this day, the closest thing I have to meditation is playing Civ V. I travel a decent amount, and one of my great joys is being on a plane without wifi but with inseat power (Civ V on the mac is a ridiculous power hog), and knowing that I've got X hours of civilization to play with no one to bother me. My strategy isn't great, I have everything set to Random, and I just drop into whatever situation and work it. At the end of a flight, I close that scenario, and rarely pick it back up - I start a new one. And I feel relaxed and my mind is clear. It's amazing.
- mbajkowski 11y ago
  In the exact same boat, or plane I suppose. Every time a trans-oceanic trip is in order this is my go to time killer. I started playing Civ 1 back in the Amiga days and when I was young it took me a while to sort out what the game was all about - I'm glad I stuck with it thought, as over the years it has been an absolute joy to experience the new versions. I have to say, that on the Amiga the games did seem to take a lot longer, I suppose it is because once the game got sufficiently complex the time for the computer turns ended up ever longer - not so much an issue on modern laptops.
- zem 11y ago
  not sure if it's just because I'm older and less into gaming, but civ5 seems markedly less fun as a game than civ1 and civ2 were. I just couldn't get into it, and I used to spend entire nights on the older games.
  - jharger 11y ago
    I feel the same way, and have been playing Civ since about 92. One of the reasons (I think) that Civ 5 is not quite as much fun is the fact that the City no longer really has that sense of individuality. In previous versions, the City was IT. Each one had its own production, trade, corruption, waste, polution, etc. It had personality! If a particular city had trouble, it could shut down or become extremely inefficient at production. The new game doesn't have this, only the aggregate of anything matters. For me the game lost a bit of its personality, and that's why I like the older ones better.
megablast 11y ago
You can see the video here: https://youtu.be/SPmKCh5BOjo?t=1991 https://youtu.be/SPmKCh5BOjo?t=1991
- Narishma 11y ago
  It's private.
marak830 11y ago
Gods the amount of time i spent on civ. But didnt that article seem to stop all of a sudden? I checked twice on my phone to see if i missed a more button. Didnt civ 4 get an award for audio?(and i loved the music on 4, was so disappointed with 5s audio), the article left me with a , meh, what about. . . ! for so many things. Being only 32 i would imagine a great article to show me things i didnt know. Sigh. The temptation to play more right now is strong, but i need to get this work done :-)
- brunoraymundo 11y ago
  Civ 5 has some real music gems. Check out Brazil's war theme: https://youtu.be/aX2CcrsxLcQ https://youtu.be/aX2CcrsxLcQ
- yen223 11y ago
  Baba Yetu, the theme song of Civ 4, was the first video game-related song to win a Grammy. Rightfully so too, in my opinion.
  - marak830 11y ago
    Thats the name of it. I need to listen again soon. So relaxing!
phillco 11y ago
My favorite thing about Civ is that its creator has kept control over it, and continues to evolve it. We'll probably be enjoying a new Civ in 2026. The charm is that it's the same game in many respects — parts evolve, but the core remains. This seems unusual; I can point to several popular 90's games that peaked there and never recovered (Roller Coaster Tycoon, Age of Empires II, and arguably SimCity 4 if you include the early naughts). I wonder why; as a player, the Civ model seems preferable (you always have modern versions and new, but not heretical, variety).
- yen223 11y ago
  Strategy games in general seem to have hit a slump for some reason.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Check out the podcast "Three Moves Ahead" it focuses 100% on strategy games. I think there are amazing games out there but they are from independent studios. Endless Legend is the big one but I also love Conquest of Elysium 3 (Forgive me a 'Roguelike' 4X game).
  - puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago
    Starcraft seems to be going strong, Legacy of the Void sold 1M copies the first day, even though the advertising wasn't particularly noticeable (Fallout 4 launched at the same time).
  - goda90 11y ago
    There has been an uptick in large scale RTS lately. Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Ashes of the Singularity, Planetary Annihilation, Grey Goo to name a few. They don't gather the big attention like AAA console games but they are still coming out. And of course there are the Pandora Interactive games that are always great.
  - exar0815 11y ago
    Depends. There are some really good STrategy games out there. Endless Space/Endless Legend, the Wargame-Series and the Total War titles. Still waiting for Empire II, though.
kinghajj 11y ago
Nobody else has mentioned this, but something Civ has taught me is how to appreciate realpolitik. Nothing makes it more clear than when you catch yourself having thoughts like: - "Washington spawned too close for comfort; they're a threat to my peoples' long term security. Annihilate them first." - "Hmm, the Mayans have some strategically valuable territory..." - "Hey, the Persians are way back in the Renaissance, while I'm in the modern era, and they have luxuries I need. Let's send a few battleships over there."
- V-2 11y ago
  Civilization taught me (or tried to teach me) that there is no corruption whatsoever in Democracy... Stalin and Mao were the greatest leaders of their respective civilizations... United Nations is one of the world wonders... creating United Nations requires Communism... : )
- jld89 11y ago
  You should totally try Europa Universalis IV for some realPolitik. "The Spanish empire's colonies are profiting from my policing in the caribbean sea, let's make a trade embargo to make them pay." CKII is really good as well, both are different dishes. I've dumped at least 500 h on each.
  - goda90 11y ago
    And you can buy a converter DLC that takes a CKII save file that's reached the end of the timeline and convert it to a EU IV save file at the beginning of the timeline.
- ascagnel_ 11y ago
  I would love to see some of the realpolitik games mentioned here get tablet/mobile versions that keep the complexity that makes those games fun. Sadly, there's not much available if you want to go down that path (the 2012 XCOM and Civ Rev 2 are about it).
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  It is remarkable how the win-or-lose outcome of the game changes the player's mindset. In the normal course of real events, I probably would never kill billions of people, but if I have 60% of the world population and I need 64% to win the game, it actually makes perfect sense to just nuke everybody, to bring down the denominator.
Smircio- 11y ago
Im still trying to tell myself that the time played clock is because I left it open all night on accident... a few times...I didnt.
ekianjo 11y ago
I highly prefer Colonization to all the Civilization episodes I have played. Colonization feels more focused, more tangible, and yet still manages to be a great management game with credible threats with multiple parties: natives trying to fight back for their land, other European powers trying to establish successful colonies on their own, and ultimately the royal power you will fight against to secure your Freedom. The tension gets really high, really quick. And there is no "shortcut" you can take to have a technological advance versus your enemies.
- eropple 11y ago
  Colonization, as a game, is a lot of fun, has mechanically held up superbly over the last two decades, and is probably my favorite Civ-family game as well, but I have a beef with the way it actually presents itself as a piece of art. Eliding such things as, oh, Europeans enslaved a shit-ton of people and killed a lot of others[1] bothers me as a student of history and as somebody acutely aware of the ongoing consequences, both for Native Americans and African-Americans, that reverberate through American society to this day. The Rise of Revolution mod for Civ4Col is a little better (it's also just really good in general, aside from being better about its recognition of marginalized people), but...there is a fundamental "ick" to colonizing other people's shit that I don't think this game properly grapples with. Because there's a moral issue to European colonization, and while I can see that being surfaced very well in a hypothetical game (I noodled on one for a while) I don't think either Colonization or Civ4Col even tries. And that's a real shame. [1] - Yeah, you can go play the Spanish and knock over a bunch of native settlements. But you almost never will after you get to a certain level of play. Instead, you will find yourself near the Arawaks or whatever, who have their AI ramped up to turbo-aggressive, and suddenly you'll just have to roll out your army at them, it's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault...ew.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    > slave trade Sure, but it's not extremely relevant to the whole era covered by the game. From Wikipedia: > It is estimated that more than half of the entire slave trade took place during the 18th century, with the British, Portuguese and French being the main carriers of nine out of ten slaves abducted in Africa.[42] By the 1690s, the English were shipping the most slaves from West Africa.[43] They maintained this position during the 18th century, becoming the biggest shippers of slaves across the Atlantic.[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#16th.2C_17th_and_18th_centuries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#16th.2C_1... While slave trade started early, it was still minor in the early stage of colonies. But you are right, the game completely ignores slave trade even in the 18th century, while it technically should not be ignored. But it's an American game, and it would never have been published if it "featured" slave trade in its mechanics.
presty 11y ago
Sid Meier's Civilization V You've Played 786 hours Last Played Today
Yhippa 11y ago
Count me in as another person who was hopelessly addicted as a kid. I remember one summer in middle school I would hit the power button on my PC and play this game until dinner. What's different about this game was that I would play it and not feel bad that I spent so much time doing it. Few games are like that for me today. This has to be one of the best dynamic puzzle or strategy games of all time.
z3t4 11y ago
Civ I is impressive, even to todays standards (mobile gaming)
msh 11y ago
Does anyone have a good suggestion for the most civilization like game for iOS?
- cstuder 11y ago
  Well, there is Civilization Revolution 2 for iOS which is a nice squares based remake of the series.
  - ascagnel_ 11y ago
    It's really not the same. Research, city management, and combat are nowhere near the level of complexity a Civ game really needs to shine. Combat boils down to Civ 4-era "stacks of doom", only after the early game you need to build 3 of every unit to combine them into an army of that unit. From there, it's building the biggest stack of doom and ranking up units the highest.
nissehulth 11y ago
I think Civ.Net was the first game I played on the internet against someone I didn't already knew. Could have been early 1996. It wasn't the best gaming experience though. Each turn took like forever (well, minutes), after a few hours we had to pause the game and agree on when to continue the next day. Still, finding an opponent "on demand" was something that did hint about what was to come later. (well, there were BBS "door games" earlier, but not really "real time" in the same way)
fergie 11y ago
I hate to think how many of those hours I am responsible for...

252 points by blammail 11y ago

I like how so many of the posts in this thread are "[this one] was the best!", but I'm pretty sure I've seen all 5 of the main games held up and possibly one about Alpha Centauri too. I'm sure when Civ 6 comes out we'll have people complaining because it's not like 5 or 4 or whichever one was their favorite, but I like that they change every time. If I wanted to buy a new game every year that was the same as the previous one, I'd be playing Madden.

tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
All the Civ games are great on their own right. I know people that still prefer 1, 2, 3 or 4. The main reason I currently play only 5/BE is their far superior graphics and interface. And no stacks of doom.

technofiend 11y ago

Civ is hella fun but it doesn't scale well - massive games become untenable due to app slowness and memory footprint. I think this is in part due to Civ's design of each player gets all their moves consecutively, rather than in parallel. Although it would change gameplay Civ could take advantage of multi cpu by either staging decision trees based on likely actions taken by the player and other civilizations or creating multiple rounds of actions in each turn which are executed in parallel. This would have the added advantage - if "they" chose to code it this way - for hardcore civ players to offload compute to AWS or other services. I would love to crank up a world domination Civ game with 50+ entities that doesn't take minutes per turn. Wishful thinking for Civ VI but there you go.

mserdarsanli 11y ago
Yeah they should also use Node.js to make it more async and MongoDB for webscale.
- technofiend 11y ago
  Sarcasm doesn't become you. :-)

touristtam 11y ago

The serie in its latest iteration is hugely underwhelming.

talles 11y ago

I used to play Civilization II... damn I feel old.

scurvy 11y ago

My first intro to overrun bugs. I couldn't otherwise have found myself yelling "effing Ghandi" so often.

ausjke 11y ago

first time heard of this, how does this compare to mindcraft? is this good for young kids?

tamana 11y ago

All I want is an orthogonal perspective UI with Civ I or Civ II rules, minus Civ I's bugs. I find the freeciv angled view unusable.

dinosaurs 11y ago

The Civ series has always been on my radar as they seem to be quite interesting games. I remember going through the tutorials of either 4 or 5 but I never really got hooked. Not for a lack of trying, but I just didn't know what to do in the games. I always felt like I needed more guidance or something. Are there guides out there to help learn how to play these games? I might try 5 again after reading this!

dudul 11y ago

By far the game I wasted the most time in my life :) Managed to kill my addiction and stop after Civ 4.

kjdal2001 11y ago
I haven't been able to kick the Civ habit completely, but I indulge much less frequently then I did back in college. I have told my coworkers though, if I come into work in the morning and look red-eyed and tired, its probably not because I was up late drinking last night. Its because I made the terrible decision to fire up a game of Civ at 9pm.

domtron_vox 11y ago

My father still plays civ 1. His windows 94 broke down a number of years ago. He was so sad about not having civ 1 so I set the game up for him in dosbox.

scholia 11y ago
Thanks. Downloaded dosbox and had nostalgia for lunch ;-)
Pxtl 11y ago
I get the appeal of simplicity,but why not try newer-but-still-simple Civ like Revolutions or something?
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  Revolutions was too simple for my taste.
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    Yes, but we're talking about Civ 1. Civ 1 is also much simpler than the modern games. Revolutions I thought was a good distilling of the Civ mechanics.
    - cmdrfred 11y ago
      Civ 1 still felt deeper to me then rev. It was ok, but I would have preferred a mobile version of Civ 1 instead.

phodo 11y ago

One of the greatest games of all time - recently added windows 10, bootcamp, virtualbox... just to be able to re-enjoy the original classic version again. Future versions don't do justice to the original.

ra1n85 11y ago

Amazing series. I still recall being able to recount all of the 7 wonders, all of the large Greek city states, and all that other countless historical context that the developers packed into the game that gave me a slight leg up in middle school history class. And of course I'll encourage my children to play someday. No childhood is complete without having to fight back Gandhi's unrelenting hordes of musketmen with stealth bombers.

mikeash 11y ago
It would be remiss to mention Civilization and Gandhi on a tech site without discussing why he was such a crazy warmonger. In the original Civilization, Gandhi's "aggression" rating was set to 1 to make him a pacifist. Except that when a civilization adopted the Democracy form of government, this reduced the leader's aggression rating by 2. The ratings were unsigned, so this wrapped around and gave Gandhi an "aggression" rating of 255 once he adopted Democracy. Oopsie.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  Wow - that's hilarious. I guess we should be grateful it was only a char ...
  - infogulch 11y ago
    The expected range for aggression is 1-10. So a max unsigned char makes Gandhi plenty aggressive.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  interesting, I remember this happening and thought was odd!
- hluska 11y ago
  You just solved a major mystery of my youth. Thank you!! :)
- deciplex 11y ago

dcw303 11y ago

I came perilously close to failing several university assignments thanks to an unhealthy obsession with original Civ. And I loved every minute of it. I still play the newer versions now and then, but the original stands out as a paragon of game design. It was grid based, so unit movement was easy with keystrokes. That along with hot keys for everything meant that you could play a complete game without a mouse. This was particularly useful at keeping the endgame speedy. Something that I think is missing in later versions.

LeifCarrotson 11y ago
1B hours played. Think about your experience with a couple hundred hours, and then multiply that by a few million similar instances - how much productivity has been lost? Or how much history has been learned, friendships built, and strategy developed? Similarly, how many billions of hours have been spent browsing Facebook, for better or worse? I think one of the most important ethical questions we can ask ourselves is how can we write great gaming, working, and social networking software that has a net positive effect on the world through the hours that are spent in it.
- jerf 11y ago
  1 billion hours played sure is a lot, in some ways. Of course, humanity racks up a billion person-hours now every nine minutes, so in another, probably more meaningful way, it's not much at all.
- cellis 11y ago
  Think of this as many hours spent NOT learning homework doing rote memorization (or literally anything else unproductive), and I think you'll find it more palatable. Game playing, especially of the Civ variety, builds problem solving skills.
- dcw303 11y ago
  You have a fair point in regards to responsibility. I'm guessing that I think similiarly to you that these experiences are subjective? One person's addiction with a 4x strategy game is another's gateway into a lifelong fascination with building complex information systems. One person's compulsive Facebook checking leading to depression is another's connection with family members when they're working overseas. There is an ethical responsibility in creating technology, but there are many shades of grey in how people use it.

pella 11y ago

free & opensource version: http://www.freeciv.org/ http://www.freeciv.org/ web version: https://play.freeciv.org/ https://play.freeciv.org/

eru 11y ago
You should also check out the first Master of Orion. The origin of the 4X name, and still one of the best examples of the genre. (There are fan-made patches available. Make sure to get them.)
- scrumper 11y ago
  Since we're doing alternatives for Civ-lovers, I really, really enjoyed Galactic Civilizations II. It had the right mix of massive scale, diverse strategy, politics, and an interesting combat mechanic with user-designed units. Endgame is sometimes a bit weak, when it's obvious you've won and have to grind through a multi-hour campaign of genocide, but it's the only game that's come close to that feeling of depth and complexity I got as a teenager from the Civ series.
  - eru 11y ago
    I tried to like Galactic Civilization II, but in the end, I came back to the first MoO. For example, I don't care enough about micro-management to build individual things on my planets. Give me the sliders. Also, MoO's research system is still without equal: each playthrough different technologies are available (for each faction, and thus for the whole galaxy) changing the character of the game. Sirian wrote well about its charms at http://sirian.warpcore.org/moo1/ http://sirian.warpcore.org/moo1/
    - scrumper 11y ago
      I never played MoO so I had no basis for comparison. I should probably rectify that :)
- deleted 11y ago
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jack9 11y ago

After I graduated to dwarf fortress, I never looked back.

cmdrfred 11y ago

In my opinion this is the best game humanity ever managed to design. I've never played anything that I've enjoyed more.

minikites 11y ago

Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri are still the best balance of simplicity vs fussiness in my opinion. I like Civ 5 quite a lot but there's a lot of fussing about with the resources like horses or oil and there are a lot of edge-case city improvements.

endgame 11y ago
Given the amount of fussing required to get the most of Supply Crawlers in SMAC, I'm surprised to hear that viewpoint. Nevertheless, the scope of SMAC's vision continues to inspire: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ is analysing the canon and implications from the various quotes and project videos.
- minikites 11y ago
  You're right that the fussiness is there with supply crawlers and some of the terraforming options, but they can be ignored. Civ 2 is pretty much perfect. Each terraform has 1 or 2 upgrades (road/railroad, irrigation/farmland, etc) and each city improvement serves an exact purpose with no "filler" improvements.
- animal531 11y ago
  They take some manual intervention, but even at high difficulty level you don't really need to use them. What made SMAC great was how many different viable strategies there were (not that they were as well balanced as those in later Civ iterations). It was great fun to mess with other factions just by modifying the terrain and sea level.

brandnewlow 11y ago

I've played 1-5 extensively and Civ III is the most fun by far. Anyone know how I can get Civ III on a Mac? It's been "not available" here forever: http://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meiers-civilization-iii-complete http://www.aspyr.com/games/sid-meiers-civilization-iii-compl... I've tried playing the Windows version via Parallels but it fails out during load.

nicolas_t 11y ago
Go here http://paulthetall.com/civilization-3-mac/ http://paulthetall.com/civilization-3-mac/ and follow the instructions. It's a wine wrapper that's already configured specifically for Civ III
zyxley 11y ago
Have you tried it with Wine? Wineskin (http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/ http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/) lets you package Wine installs as self-contained Mac apps, which takes most of the hassle out of it.
- brandnewlow 11y ago
  I will give it a go!
chadzawistowski 11y ago
I have gotten it to run in Wine before, after struggles with `lsans.fot`.
- sevensor 11y ago
  This is how I play Civ 3, and it works great except that it hangs on exit. Fine by me.

jcadam 11y ago

Played the original Civilization on an Amiga and have played every release since (including CivNet). Civilization II was easily the best game in the series. It's sad that Civ V, as pretty as it is, is so freaking horrible.

goda90 11y ago
Civ V with all the DLC is actually quite well rounded in my opinion. If you haven't tried the Complete version, give it a shot. It's not the same for sure, especially the combat. Maybe I'm just used to variation because the first Civ game I really got into was Call to Power, then followed by III and IV.
increment_i 11y ago
One of the greatest games of all time for sure. It's a pity that they also dropped the ball on a decent mobile version too - seems like the medium could lend itself well to a well designed turn based strategy.
- thirdsun 11y ago
  My thoughts as well. Similar with SI Games' Football Manager. I just don't want a dumbed down version, but the full thing without compromises.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
Let me guess, II was the first you played? Everybody has a special attachment to the first one they got addicted too. In my opinion II was the worst of the five. It was basically the same as the first with more of everything. More techs, more unit types et cetera. Didn't really add anything to the game except make it longer. It meant you couldn't finish a game in a single sitting which really lessened the appeal to me. Starting with III they started added more dimensions like religion and culture. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't but I appreciated exploring how strategies changed. Edit: did a really poor job of reading your post or else you edited it. Oh well, just pretend my comment stands alone, please.

locusm 11y ago

The way Civ let you email a multiplayer round was awesome when connectivity was an issue.

vidarh 11y ago
Lots of similar BBS games, like some versions of Empire for example [1], supported "play by mail" in various forms so they could be played on custom clients offline followed by uploading the moves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Classic

mattzito 11y ago

I started playing civilization when I was 12 or 13 (Civilization 1), and still, to this day, the closest thing I have to meditation is playing Civ V. I travel a decent amount, and one of my great joys is being on a plane without wifi but with inseat power (Civ V on the mac is a ridiculous power hog), and knowing that I've got X hours of civilization to play with no one to bother me. My strategy isn't great, I have everything set to Random, and I just drop into whatever situation and work it. At the end of a flight, I close that scenario, and rarely pick it back up - I start a new one. And I feel relaxed and my mind is clear. It's amazing.

mbajkowski 11y ago
In the exact same boat, or plane I suppose. Every time a trans-oceanic trip is in order this is my go to time killer. I started playing Civ 1 back in the Amiga days and when I was young it took me a while to sort out what the game was all about - I'm glad I stuck with it thought, as over the years it has been an absolute joy to experience the new versions. I have to say, that on the Amiga the games did seem to take a lot longer, I suppose it is because once the game got sufficiently complex the time for the computer turns ended up ever longer - not so much an issue on modern laptops.
zem 11y ago
not sure if it's just because I'm older and less into gaming, but civ5 seems markedly less fun as a game than civ1 and civ2 were. I just couldn't get into it, and I used to spend entire nights on the older games.
- jharger 11y ago
  I feel the same way, and have been playing Civ since about 92. One of the reasons (I think) that Civ 5 is not quite as much fun is the fact that the City no longer really has that sense of individuality. In previous versions, the City was IT. Each one had its own production, trade, corruption, waste, polution, etc. It had personality! If a particular city had trouble, it could shut down or become extremely inefficient at production. The new game doesn't have this, only the aggregate of anything matters. For me the game lost a bit of its personality, and that's why I like the older ones better.

megablast 11y ago

You can see the video here: https://youtu.be/SPmKCh5BOjo?t=1991 https://youtu.be/SPmKCh5BOjo?t=1991

Narishma 11y ago
It's private.

marak830 11y ago

Gods the amount of time i spent on civ. But didnt that article seem to stop all of a sudden? I checked twice on my phone to see if i missed a more button. Didnt civ 4 get an award for audio?(and i loved the music on 4, was so disappointed with 5s audio), the article left me with a , meh, what about. . . ! for so many things. Being only 32 i would imagine a great article to show me things i didnt know. Sigh. The temptation to play more right now is strong, but i need to get this work done :-)

brunoraymundo 11y ago
Civ 5 has some real music gems. Check out Brazil's war theme: https://youtu.be/aX2CcrsxLcQ https://youtu.be/aX2CcrsxLcQ
yen223 11y ago
Baba Yetu, the theme song of Civ 4, was the first video game-related song to win a Grammy. Rightfully so too, in my opinion.
- marak830 11y ago
  Thats the name of it. I need to listen again soon. So relaxing!

phillco 11y ago

My favorite thing about Civ is that its creator has kept control over it, and continues to evolve it. We'll probably be enjoying a new Civ in 2026. The charm is that it's the same game in many respects — parts evolve, but the core remains. This seems unusual; I can point to several popular 90's games that peaked there and never recovered (Roller Coaster Tycoon, Age of Empires II, and arguably SimCity 4 if you include the early naughts). I wonder why; as a player, the Civ model seems preferable (you always have modern versions and new, but not heretical, variety).

yen223 11y ago
Strategy games in general seem to have hit a slump for some reason.
- baldfat 11y ago
  Check out the podcast "Three Moves Ahead" it focuses 100% on strategy games. I think there are amazing games out there but they are from independent studios. Endless Legend is the big one but I also love Conquest of Elysium 3 (Forgive me a 'Roguelike' 4X game).
- puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago
  Starcraft seems to be going strong, Legacy of the Void sold 1M copies the first day, even though the advertising wasn't particularly noticeable (Fallout 4 launched at the same time).
- goda90 11y ago
  There has been an uptick in large scale RTS lately. Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Ashes of the Singularity, Planetary Annihilation, Grey Goo to name a few. They don't gather the big attention like AAA console games but they are still coming out. And of course there are the Pandora Interactive games that are always great.
- exar0815 11y ago
  Depends. There are some really good STrategy games out there. Endless Space/Endless Legend, the Wargame-Series and the Total War titles. Still waiting for Empire II, though.

kinghajj 11y ago

Nobody else has mentioned this, but something Civ has taught me is how to appreciate realpolitik. Nothing makes it more clear than when you catch yourself having thoughts like: - "Washington spawned too close for comfort; they're a threat to my peoples' long term security. Annihilate them first." - "Hmm, the Mayans have some strategically valuable territory..." - "Hey, the Persians are way back in the Renaissance, while I'm in the modern era, and they have luxuries I need. Let's send a few battleships over there."

V-2 11y ago
Civilization taught me (or tried to teach me) that there is no corruption whatsoever in Democracy... Stalin and Mao were the greatest leaders of their respective civilizations... United Nations is one of the world wonders... creating United Nations requires Communism... : )
jld89 11y ago
You should totally try Europa Universalis IV for some realPolitik. "The Spanish empire's colonies are profiting from my policing in the caribbean sea, let's make a trade embargo to make them pay." CKII is really good as well, both are different dishes. I've dumped at least 500 h on each.
- goda90 11y ago
  And you can buy a converter DLC that takes a CKII save file that's reached the end of the timeline and convert it to a EU IV save file at the beginning of the timeline.
ascagnel_ 11y ago
I would love to see some of the realpolitik games mentioned here get tablet/mobile versions that keep the complexity that makes those games fun. Sadly, there's not much available if you want to go down that path (the 2012 XCOM and Civ Rev 2 are about it).
thrownaway2424 11y ago
It is remarkable how the win-or-lose outcome of the game changes the player's mindset. In the normal course of real events, I probably would never kill billions of people, but if I have 60% of the world population and I need 64% to win the game, it actually makes perfect sense to just nuke everybody, to bring down the denominator.

Smircio- 11y ago

Im still trying to tell myself that the time played clock is because I left it open all night on accident... a few times...I didnt.

ekianjo 11y ago

I highly prefer Colonization to all the Civilization episodes I have played. Colonization feels more focused, more tangible, and yet still manages to be a great management game with credible threats with multiple parties: natives trying to fight back for their land, other European powers trying to establish successful colonies on their own, and ultimately the royal power you will fight against to secure your Freedom. The tension gets really high, really quick. And there is no "shortcut" you can take to have a technological advance versus your enemies.

eropple 11y ago
Colonization, as a game, is a lot of fun, has mechanically held up superbly over the last two decades, and is probably my favorite Civ-family game as well, but I have a beef with the way it actually presents itself as a piece of art. Eliding such things as, oh, Europeans enslaved a shit-ton of people and killed a lot of others[1] bothers me as a student of history and as somebody acutely aware of the ongoing consequences, both for Native Americans and African-Americans, that reverberate through American society to this day. The Rise of Revolution mod for Civ4Col is a little better (it's also just really good in general, aside from being better about its recognition of marginalized people), but...there is a fundamental "ick" to colonizing other people's shit that I don't think this game properly grapples with. Because there's a moral issue to European colonization, and while I can see that being surfaced very well in a hypothetical game (I noodled on one for a while) I don't think either Colonization or Civ4Col even tries. And that's a real shame. [1] - Yeah, you can go play the Spanish and knock over a bunch of native settlements. But you almost never will after you get to a certain level of play. Instead, you will find yourself near the Arawaks or whatever, who have their AI ramped up to turbo-aggressive, and suddenly you'll just have to roll out your army at them, it's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault...ew.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  > slave trade Sure, but it's not extremely relevant to the whole era covered by the game. From Wikipedia: > It is estimated that more than half of the entire slave trade took place during the 18th century, with the British, Portuguese and French being the main carriers of nine out of ten slaves abducted in Africa.[42] By the 1690s, the English were shipping the most slaves from West Africa.[43] They maintained this position during the 18th century, becoming the biggest shippers of slaves across the Atlantic.[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#16th.2C_17th_and_18th_centuries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#16th.2C_1... While slave trade started early, it was still minor in the early stage of colonies. But you are right, the game completely ignores slave trade even in the 18th century, while it technically should not be ignored. But it's an American game, and it would never have been published if it "featured" slave trade in its mechanics.

presty 11y ago

Sid Meier's Civilization V You've Played 786 hours Last Played Today

Yhippa 11y ago

Count me in as another person who was hopelessly addicted as a kid. I remember one summer in middle school I would hit the power button on my PC and play this game until dinner. What's different about this game was that I would play it and not feel bad that I spent so much time doing it. Few games are like that for me today. This has to be one of the best dynamic puzzle or strategy games of all time.

z3t4 11y ago

Civ I is impressive, even to todays standards (mobile gaming)

msh 11y ago

Does anyone have a good suggestion for the most civilization like game for iOS?

cstuder 11y ago
Well, there is Civilization Revolution 2 for iOS which is a nice squares based remake of the series.
- ascagnel_ 11y ago
  It's really not the same. Research, city management, and combat are nowhere near the level of complexity a Civ game really needs to shine. Combat boils down to Civ 4-era "stacks of doom", only after the early game you need to build 3 of every unit to combine them into an army of that unit. From there, it's building the biggest stack of doom and ranking up units the highest.

nissehulth 11y ago

I think Civ.Net was the first game I played on the internet against someone I didn't already knew. Could have been early 1996. It wasn't the best gaming experience though. Each turn took like forever (well, minutes), after a few hours we had to pause the game and agree on when to continue the next day. Still, finding an opponent "on demand" was something that did hint about what was to come later. (well, there were BBS "door games" earlier, but not really "real time" in the same way)

fergie 11y ago

I hate to think how many of those hours I am responsible for...