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The Game of Everything, Part 1: Making Civilization

552 points by doppp 9y ago

myth_drannon 9y ago
The only game that I can still play non-stop, 20 years later.
- jerrysievert 9y ago
  I was able to as well, until the iOS version didn't get updated, and is no longer playable on iOS 11. sadly, Pirates went the same way, as well as getting removed from the App Store.
jpm_sd 9y ago
This game blew. my. mind. when I was a kid. The first summer we had it, I played it eight hours a day on our IBM PS/2. When school was back in session, I wrote about it and drew maps for school projects. I dreamed about it.
- w0de0 9y ago
  What a joyful connection across generations: I did the same with Civilization III & a Compaq.
  - Brendinooo 9y ago
    Civ III and a Compaq - same! I even got involved making multi-unit graphics over at CivFanatics.
- bergie 9y ago
  Sadly, its sequels still have that same pull. Bought Civ VI on the iPad around Christmas, and have lost countless weekends since...
  - spdionis 9y ago
    * have enjoyed it for countless weekends since. Fixed that for you :).
    - untog 9y ago
      Not mutually exclusive!
      - matte_black 9y ago
        better to have enjoyed and lost than to never have enjoyed at all
- psyc 9y ago
  The game taught me some high-level things at an early age, like cities grow near water, transit lanes are like blood vessels, and food becomes people.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Romanulus 9y ago
    That's actually a really good point... it also goes on and shows how viscerally those cities are connected in terms of trade, movement of troops, and thus warfare/conquest. Thank goodness for Civilization on SNES, too. ;)
  - acjohnson55 9y ago
    And then people become Soylent Green :)
    - kyberias 9y ago
      No spoiling of fine movie plots! :)
- Erlangolem 9y ago
  I used to love games like Oregon Trail and Spaceward Ho as a kid, and I remember dreaming about what games could be as a result. Then Civ came along and it was a revelation. My dreams were nothing, and I fell headfirst in love with Civ. It was the first game I could point to and say, “Do you see that? Can you see where this medium can go from here? The value and pleasure in it?” It was just so deep, and so far beyond anything else I’d ever seen. I think I can honestly say that it was the first game that was at least as good as a great book.
- kakwa_ 9y ago
  As a child, I loved this game. I remember spending hours on it, not knowing what I was doing. I had an english version of the game, and being 9 or 10 at the time, I didn't speak a word of english. It took me ages to understand that you could switch from despotism to another form of government (monarchy, republic, etc). I was always wondering why my cities were so small, even with irrigation and railroads everywhere. Also, I didn't have the manual, so with time, I started to learn the tech tree by heart (the "license" verification was based on knowing the parents of a given tech IIRC). I've also read the civilopedia countless times. I'm still proud to have beaten the game in Emperor ^^. I've also spent a lot of time on other Sid Meier's games like Railroad Tycoon or Colonization. Thank you for these lost hours.
  - yread 9y ago
    same here. I was having great fun travelling around with the little carriage and exploring the world. Took like three playthroughs to realize you can and should build a city with it. And being super proud I've learnt a new english word - "granary" was probably in the first 100 english words i knew
    - ethbro 9y ago
      Try being given SimLife at 7. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimLife https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimLife Think my parents may have overreached a little on the educational software, there.
      - distances 9y ago
        I also had this as a kid. I think the game was quite lacking in the "game" aspect, though it was nice to have my new mutated orchid overtake the world.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - paulclinger 9y ago
    I had the same experience. I was a bit older, but didn't know much English either and had a printed copy of Civilopedia with me to study. It was fun experience both playing the game and studying English (and a bit of history) at the same time. I still occasionally play it with my kids.
- pimeys 9y ago
  If I wasn't so good at mathematics, my teacher would've probably called my mom for me being late so often when I just needed to play one more turn before bed and one more turn before going to school...
  - adaven_xt 9y ago
    That's your problem right there. We convinced the teacher of it's historical merits and brought the game to class each day to play after we completed our assignments!
    - jwdunne 9y ago
      That's genius. I feel like I've missed crucial Civ time now!
    - isostatic 9y ago
      I had an RE gcse exam (a mock I think) in about 95. One question was "describe a creation story". So I wrote something very close to this: In the beginning the earth was without form, and void. But the sun shone upon the sleeping earth, And deep inside the brittle crust, massive forces waited to be unleashed. The seas parted, and great continents were formed. Mountains arose, earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves. Volcanoes erupted and spewed forth fiery lava, And charged the atmosphere with strange gasses. Into this swirling maelstrom of fire and air and water, The first stirrings of life appeared. Tiny organisms, cells and amoeba, clinging to tiny sheltered habitats. But the seeds of life grew, and strengthened, and spread, and diversified, and prospered. And soon every continent and climate teemed with life. And with life came instinct, and specialization, natural selection, reptiles, dinosaurs and mammals. And finally there evolved a species known as man. And there appeared the first faint glimmers of intelligence. The fruits of intelligence were many: Fire, tools, and weapons, The hunt, farming, and the sharing of food, The family, the village, and the tribe. Now it required but one more ingredient: A great leader to unite the quarrelling tribes, To harness the power of the land, To build a legacy that would stand the test of time: A CIVILIZATION!
- jd20 9y ago
  Also brings back memories for me. I was never good at managing many cities, focusing on a few megacities instead and opting for large scale nuclear war :) Kinda reminds me of another game I used to play around that time, Global Effect. Civ.exe was also the first game I customized. I was entertained to no end when I found out you could use a hex editor to change the strings. I rewrote the introductory text, and gave all the leaders new dialogue. That was also probably around when I started getting more interested in how games worked, rather than just playing them...
  - Namrog84 9y ago
    As an amateur game developer and professional developer. I got into both because of similar origins of things. I do wonder though how modern games and tools are both easier to use but also more complex how it will shape the next few generations of devs and game designers.
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    RedEdit in the system 7 days was a godsend in my life. Hacking new sounds into Maelstrom. Changing character names in Pararena. Stumbling into learning what a sprite was.
    - kolpa 9y ago
      ResEdit. A word I haven't seen in decades, still one ECC pointer hop from top-of-mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResEdit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResEdit
      - kzrdude 9y ago
        And it was a staple of Escape Velocity plugin editing too. Very fun program for a child with an old mac at that time.
    - lowdest 9y ago
      The ResEdit days! I changed every sound in Marathon to the point it was unplayable. I had no idea what I was doing but I was fascinated.
Numberwang 9y ago
I'm thinking of trying it out for the first time. Which version is the best? I hear people don't really like the newer versions?
- smacktoward 9y ago
  The general consensus is that Civ 4 is the series' high point. I prefer Civ 5 myself, though. It set out to streamline the Civ formula, which led to a game a lot of purists thought was too simplified but I found quicker to play and more enjoyable.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    It's also worth remembering that Civ games are mostly judged in hindsight. By the time Civ 5 came out in 2010, most series fans would have been playing fully-expanded Civ 4, with all the rebalancing and new content that entails. Anyone who liked vassal states, Great Persons, corporations, or the complex space and culture victories was going off expansion content. First-release Civ 5 made some interesting alterations to the series, but had a lot of implementation issues. Unbalanced wonders, AI bugginess, and a late-game slog often made it feel bad regardless of the design choices. BNW-era Civ 5 brought a lot more logic to the tech tree, smoothed out broken features like "one free technology", and made the late game vastly more interesting. Honestly, I suspect we've only recently gotten to a 'fair' comparison of 4 and 5, with both of them feeling like classics in light of BE and 6.
    - aphextron 9y ago
      >Honestly, I suspect we've only recently gotten to a 'fair' comparison of 4 and 5, with both of them feeling like classics in light of BE and 6. Let's just pretend BE and 6 never happened.
      - patmorgan23 9y ago
        6 still has time to mature, I think the district system is neat and make you think about the geography of you empire more, but it defenitly needs some tuning. Also they really need to get a handle on the AI.
smacktoward 9y ago
Since Jimmy Maher's essays on gaming history like this one are so consistently popular on HN, allow me to point out that he has a (criminally under-subscribed, IMHO) Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/DigitalAntiquarian/ https://www.patreon.com/DigitalAntiquarian/
jogjayr 9y ago
As soon as I saw the screenshot from Empire with the unit actions menu ("Fortify", "Wait", "Sentry", "Disband") I was blown away. I had no idea the idea of this combat system was that old!
IAmEveryone 9y ago
I always preferred Colonization with its far more detailed economic mechanisms. In Civ, I never got over the feeling that my actions actually had little impact. Similar in SimCity: build all three types of zones, then build whatever services are in demand. There is nothing creative in those games. Intersperse commercial and residential zoning to reduce traffic? Nope. Build a school blocked in by coal power plants? Sure!
- dwighttk 9y ago
  man, why you building power plants you gotta replace every 50 years? Hydro or nothing. Colonization was great too...
  - isostatic 9y ago
    Sc2k you could raise land, build water, then build hydro. It was dumb, but useful.
    - dwighttk 9y ago
      and even top it off with a water pump!
- eropple 9y ago
  Colonization is a great game from a mechanical perspective (aside from the AI bugs, which make it a slog to play today, and the crazy behaviors of the game when you have Ben Franklin). I find it difficult to play today in no small part because of the level of violence done to history. Civilization posits itself as almost a board game, and to me it largely strips itself of the historicity that its setting implies by turning it into overtly "gamey" stuff. Pottery implies Granary. Colonization personalizes a lot...and stuff like the way that native "converts" "flock to your mission in their city" when you attack it with artillery is a significant whitewashing of what anybody playing the game as an adult knows is going on. I don't think Brian Reynolds had ill intentions by any stretch; you can, of course, be peaceful in Col, and it's probably the best way to play at higher levels (France becomes really advantageous, especially stacking with the Pocahontas bonus). And the way the manual is written clearly indicates that they understood the parts of the historical record that the game leaves out. I have always assumed that there was fear from higher-ups at MicroProse that made them sanitize the game a little. But it mostly makes me wonder what a more honest game, made today, would look like. I might or might not have half an engine written on this laptop, as it happens...at some point I'd love to sit down and talk to Reynolds about that game. Everyone asks him about Alpha Centauri, but I really want to know about Col! (Also: while Civ4Col is pretty lame, I think its biggest mods, The Authentic Colonization and Religion and Revolution, take important steps toward a more honest representation of things. They're also really, really fun in ways Civ4Col was not.)
timavr 9y ago
The best thing about Civ, that player already has all the concepts from studying history.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  You've reversed cause and effect there :-)
evunveot 9y ago
>[Talking about the early strategy game Empire:] But the most relevant version for our purposes was created by Walter Bright, a 20-year-old student at the California Institute of Technology, in 1977. Bright himself later ported it to microcomputers, efforts which culminated in him selling the game to a small publisher called Interstel Bright would later be known for earning over 18000 karma on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=WalterBright https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=WalterBright Among other things :)
- busterarm 9y ago
  Empire (or rather, Empire Deluxe) is still today one of my all time favorite games.
  - simonebrunozzi 9y ago
    I don't have a lot of time to play videogames anymore, but I'm like you - my favorite is Master of Magic (never surpassed, in my view). Sometimes I play it on Dosbox.
  - pwang 9y ago
    Agreed! Empire Deluxe is my favorite! Sadly, I've never been satisfied with the Killer Bees "modernization" ports - the UI/UX is odd and deficient. I just want a good Empire Deluxe for tablet. Polytopia is the closest I've found, but it's not really the same.
weerd 9y ago
Great article. My favorite part was learning a new word: grognard! Makes me sad that I only got into the series at Civ5, which I enjoyed every bit of except for the ultra creepy 3D models of the leaders.... totally unnecessary in this kind of game. Also it's ridiculous to see Gandhi pop up and declare war on you. It was a good example of a typically superfluous feature tacked on to an otherwise decent piece of software.
- DonaldPShimoda 9y ago
  > Also it's ridiculous to see Gandhi pop up and declare war on you. Yeah, but it's a staple of the series now. If anything, I think an installment without a warmongering Gandhi would be disappointing! https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civilization-1653818245 https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civiliza...
  - kimar 9y ago
    Thanks for sharing this! Quote from the article: In the original Civilization, it was because of a bug. Each leader in the game had an “aggression” rating, and Gandhi - to best reflect his real-world persona - was given the lowest score possible, a 1, so low that he’d rarely if ever go out of his way to declare war on someone. Only, there was a problem. When a player adopted democracy in Civilization, their aggression would be automatically reduced by 2. Code being code, if Gandhi went democratic his aggression wouldn’t go to -1, it looped back around to the ludicrously high figure of 255, making him as aggressive as a civilization could possibly be.
    - ericmcer 9y ago
      It kinda sucks that nowadays that would be fixed in the next patch and forgotten about as a minor bug in the games history. There was definitely something more artistic about the old software distribution style. Once your creation was given to the world it was able to take on its own life.
      - 9y ago
cpeterso 9y ago
Here are videos of two GDC 2017 talks about Civilization that I enjoyed: Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization (with Civilization creators Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts Absolutely No Pressure: Continuing a Successful Game Series with Civilization VI (with Civilization VI lead designer Ed Beach): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUl_3DydD7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUl_3DydD7U
sysbell 9y ago
I've played every Civ since the original. I love blowing the minds of kids who're playing it now, telling them how copy protection worked in the first game. Easily my favorite PC game of all time.
yread 9y ago
Amazing history. I had no idea about the relation to Avalon Hill or the gentleman's agreement between the two CEOs. Anyone knows where can I read more about it?
alatz 9y ago
For anyone who's interested in a detailed look at Sid Meier's history in the game industry from the man himself, I highly recommend this series of interviews from the Designer Notes podcast: https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-1 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... It's long (4 parts, each of are 1.5 - 2 hours), but worth it. The interviewer is Soren Johnson (one of the lead designers of Civ4) which makes for some great behind-the-scenes stories/insights.
wollstonecraft 9y ago
A propos, there is a longturn Freeciv game starting in two days: http://longturn.org/game/LT43/ http://longturn.org/game/LT43/ 30+ players, one turn per day.
hawktheslayer 9y ago
This was a really enjoyable read. The "aimlessness" of SimCity series resonates with me, and while I loved the game, when my arcologies shot off into space I felt a certain empty sadness. Its great to see talented designers addressing this in their games.
ordinaryperson 9y ago
In some ways I prefer the simplicity of Civ 1 over the current Civ 6. For example, in Civ 6 establishing trade routes becomes really important, but it's impossible to automate. So EVERY time a trader finishes a route you must MANUALLY select which city to trade with. By endgame you're clicking through a dozen trade routes every turn. Also, unless you decide to annihilate everyone prepare for NPCs to constantly pester you with stupid requests, like trading your capital for a resource of peaches. And then they can keep repeating the same requests. Why can't I just set my disposition to always automatically deny all incoming requests? The waging war by religion seems incomplete too, you only have two unit types: apostles and missionaries. I recommend 6 overall but Civ 1 doesn't overcomplicate it, it's still as great today as it was back then.
- wolco 9y ago
  Civ 3 feels like the right version with the level of detail vs fun.
  - ordinaryperson 9y ago
    Civ 3 was good, I played way too much of that. The one big improvement of Civ 6 I can attest to is not having to build individual boats/ships for melee units once you have the appropriate skills -- just direct your helicopters to the oceans and they turn into transports. All good games. But a few simple adjustments would just really relieve a lot of the small annoyances.
    - isostatic 9y ago
      Civ 3 was great fun. I actually installed windows to play it when it came out. I remember one game, I was doing well, better than my neighbours, then oil appeared on the map. But not in my terrortry. This required an unprovoked war of expansion into a neighbour, and quickly, to gain control over this critical resource. Call to power was quite good too - with undersea, space, and future tech.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    Civ 2 is better, it's got a bit less detail (i.e. less endless managing of cities...), and got the more aged graphics to boot. Then again, it's already got the the isometric perspective.
qxzw 9y ago
I have to recommend Vox Populi for Civ5. https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopuli/ https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopuli/ Community Patch Project & Community Balance Patch. Still under regular development, a lot of (if not all) base game issues are ironed out. After playing this I couldn't force myself to endure Civ6 and its many flaws.
smogcutter 9y ago
For those interested in learning more about simulation games and the grognards that play them, I strongly recommend "Playing at the World" by Jon Peterson. It's everything you ever wanted to know about the origins and theory of simulation games, especially D&D, but were afraid to ask. Jimmy Maher's thoughts about "experientialist" games (linked in TFA) definitely echo Peterson. Worth a read for anyone interested in games.
cletus 9y ago
I'll chime in and say too that this game changed my life. I honestly don't even remember where I got it from. But there were days when I'd wake up around 11am, turn on my 486, start up Civ and then look outside and it was dark. It was crazy how much play I got out of this game. While I've enjoyed the successors to various degrees none has matched the life-alterigness [tm] of the first Civ. I sort of found Civ2 & 3 just more... tedious. Civ4 was huge for me however. In particular a mod called Fall From Heaven 2. I probably played this 20x as much as base Civ4. At least. Civ5 of course invented the hexagon, which people went nuts for for some reason. I played this some. Likewise I played Civ6 some. Oh and let's not forget Alpha Centauri, which seemed a little... underdeveloped? I mean it wasn't bad. It was good in fact. It just could've used some fleshing out in the sense of sequels to expand on the concept.
- mercutio2 9y ago
  Probably 50% of the CPU time executed on my 386SX was playing Civ. Good times, not good for my study habits though.
halo 9y ago
Does anyone know why the original Civilization (or CivNet) and Civilization 2 aren't avaliable to buy digitally?
finnjohnsen2 9y ago
Civilization and Orion 2 - childhood gaming life secured. I still buy, play and enjoy the sequals whenever they are released. I actually had a few good hours of Master of Orion just now this evening. <3
ajtulloch 9y ago
Related, and quite an interesting perspective: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/15/all-rise-and-no-fall-how-civilization-reinforces-a-dangerous-myth/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/15/all-rise-and-no-...
Maultasche 9y ago
I got Civilization really early on before it was obvious that it was going to be popular. I love reading the thick manual, strategy guide, and advances chart. I really enjoyed starting a civil war by capturing another civilization's capital city. There was one game where I was in the Americas and the Zulus (always crazily warlike and expansionist) had conquered the rest of the world. It looked like they were going to overwhelm me. So I parked an aircraft carrier and a bunch of transports off of southern Africa and captured their capital city with a surprise attack by overwhelming forces. The entire Zulu empire immediately started a civil war, with half of it becoming the Egyptians. I was unaware of the civil war feature when I did so (wasn't documented in the manual), and it really improved my opinion of the game. I ended up winning because the new Egyptian civilization and the Zulu civilization were too busy fighting each other to send enough against my forces. The technology capturing feature was great too. I was playing in the Americas one time, and I was hopelessly behind the Chinese. I had musketeers and cannons, while they had tanks. I launched a surprise attack with all the forces I could muster and captured a few of their cities, getting technologies such as the automobile by doing so. I was then able to produce tanks, and ended up modernizing myself by capturing more cities and stealing technology. I absolutely loved that game.
- kakwa_ 9y ago
  I did the same in one game. One of the civilization was way ahead of me in term of tech. Fortunatly I had a large empire, able to produce a lot of units, and this civilization was rater small. So I sent loads of units on this civilization to take one city. Countless units died, but in the end I was able to take over the city and gain one tech. What I did later was a bit of a cheat, but it worked. I removed all my units from the city, let the other civilization retake it, reconquered it the next turn and got another new tech. I did this for a few turns, and presto, I was on par with the other civilization in term of technology. Then, it was game over for all the other civilizations as I was also the biggest producer in term of industry. As for the capital, I did the trick to make a raid on it in another game. The motivation was a little different however. They were getting really close to launching to Alpha Centauri, taking their capital destroyed their spaceship. And I was able to win. I also remember playing the game way past its end (something like year 3000 or 4000). It was quite funny, because of global warming, all the terrains were converted to swamps or deserts.
Joshynox 9y ago
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tcbawo 9y ago
One aspect of the original Civ I always enjoyed was when a country could sometimes split into two. It wasn't in later versions, although I haven't played some of the more recent versions. I know myself too well (Civ games are great time sink).
- distances 9y ago
  I can confirm that this hasn't been a feature in any of the modern versions.
  - omerhj 9y ago
    This probably doesn't qualify as a modern version, but I occasionally play Civ2 (the original Win32s version, in a 32-bit Windows 7 VM) and the empire splitting happens there as well.
- Maken 9y ago
  They kind of reintroduced it in the Rise and Fall expansion for Civ VI.
pavlov 9y ago
"An extremely rudimentary diplomatic model came in, with geopolitical relations boiled down to make war or make peace, demand tribute or pay tribute." Actually seems like a pretty accurate description of American diplomacy in 2018. "This week, I shall make peace with North Korea but demand tribute from Canada. Next week, we'll see what happens?"
jcadam 9y ago
Had the Amiga version of Civilization - I was absolutely hooked immediately. A little later on I got into CivNet on Windows 3.1 (Trumpet Winsock and SLIP!), and eventually Civ2 (the pinnacle of the series). I haven't really liked the latter games in the series. It just seems like something is missing :/
AceJohnny2 9y ago
Tangentially, the article mentions Global Conquest [1] as another "all-encompassing" strategy game that came out around the same period as Civilization. I have good nostalgic memories of Global Conquest, and every so often wish to replay it again. It is indeed much more limited in scope than Civ, focusing on the purely military aspect, but like Civ (and Empire before it) had the notion of cities producing units and forming the economic backbone of your faction. Its twist was the random events that would come up every 5 turns, applying effects for the next 5 turns, like Battle Fatigue (units wouldn't regen) or my favorite: Solar Flares, that would make the interface glitch and sometimes ignore clicks. I spent a great many hours playing multiplayer hotseat with Global Conquest. I wonder if anyone's re-implemented it as a web-game since... Edit: here's one DosBox/emscripten online playable version: https://classicreload.com/global-conquest.html https://classicreload.com/global-conquest.html [1] http://www.mobygames.com/game/global-conquest http://www.mobygames.com/game/global-conquest
orf 9y ago
For those here that love Civilization as I do, I recommend checking out Stellaris from Paradox (who make some.other popular strategy games). Imagine Civilization, but in space, and maybe crossed with the Foundation series by Asimov. It's really really good, and the new patch (2.0) makes it much more enjoyable (in true Civil fashion, where you wait for the mature DLC or big balancing summer patch to really bring the game into its stride).
- cperciva 9y ago
  I haven't tried Stellaris, but I've heard complaints that it suffers from a "don't know how well you're doing" problem, in that you can be many hours into a game before you encounter other aliens and immediately realize that you're so far behind that your eventual defeat is inevitable. Have you encountered that problem and/or do you know if it has been addressed?
  - tidon12 9y ago
    Hm, The best answer as I see it is that the game allows you to set both the size of the galaxy (map) and the number of civilizations in it (competitors). If you are concerned with not seeing competition soon enough, you can always tweak those settings to ensure you do, although I personally have never had that issue.
  - orf 9y ago
    Yeah it does happen, but that's part of the fun. It's not a 'set up a game, put X hours in and win' situation. If you do encounter that in a game just do what you'd perhaps do 'in real life': try and be friends with them and not tempt them to anihalate you until you're strong enough to defend yourself. That might mean giving them resources, or not taking stars near their borders. And obviously up your ship building capacity and start investing more resources there.
    - usrusr 9y ago
      That's an important point. Stellaris is intended to not be a defined, balanced race from planet to galactic empire, but more a "biography simulator" for a space-faring civilization: you may have older siblings and they will always be older than you. An important conceptual step away from the "Empire" roots that will be much easier to grasp for those who have been exposed to other Paradox titles like CK2 (where a single paythrough might go from count to emperor and back to count again, and then make the jump to a completely different religious group where a similar story unfolds under different rules) or EU4. But Stellaris fails to pull it off. There are a few sleeping giants which, after learning the hard way, you'll just ignore until you are ready to take them on. When you have mastered those pitfalls (and that isn't hard) you are back to the single-minded race for empire, with no interesting goals for those left behind due to some early blunder which stalled the resource throughput growth rate for a while.
rkagerer 9y ago
Am I the only obsessive-compulsive weirdo who would do stuff like this? https://imgur.com/a/ZDzzi https://imgur.com/a/ZDzzi
Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
I remember spending many hours playing Civilization. I wish someone like GOG would pick it up and package it for modern systems.
BeetleB 9y ago
When I was an undergrad, I had a roommate who was a metallurgy PhD student. When I mentioned this to high school friends, too many of them asked: "Wait - so he's involved in cannon technology?"
on_and_off 9y ago
Tangentially, this article reminded me of this great video about politics in video games : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_tdztHiyiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_tdztHiyiE Civilization is given as a great example of political views influencing a game in the win states it provides : militaristic cultural or economical domination, all very American values. That's a very imperialistic view of the world. It has certainly changed my perception of this great game (although not as much as it did for Sim City)
quadcore 9y ago
While it's a wonder in many ways, the issue with civilization, as with age of empire as it happens, is that it never have been strongly balanced. If you are a game developer and if you want to make money, I believe there is a $1B game in a balanced civilization. The way Starcraft solved balancing a strategy game is genius. Basically, most unit have the same damage / cost ratio, but they have different orthogonal abilities. Kinda remind me the weapons of Duke3D which none was better than the other, and all useful depending on the circumstances (little known was the fact that the default gun was absolutely deadly at distance).
DonHopkins 9y ago
>“Sid had a very clear notion: he was going to make it fun. He didn’t give a damn about anything else; it was going to be fun. He said, ‘I have absolutely no reservation about fiddling with realism or anything, so long as I can make it more fun.'” This reminds me of Will Wright's answer to the typical deep questions he's frequently asked about the design of SimCity: http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/9 http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/9 >Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games. >On the simulation model: ... >Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like "which ontological urban paridigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?" He replied, "I just kind of optimized for game play."
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  It's really all about reticulating splines
covfefenut 9y ago
I thought it was based on a board game? I like it because you run your own nation and see if you can do better.
- egypturnash 9y ago
  The end of the article touches on the computer game’s complicated relationship to the board game.
ssaddi 9y ago
I started playing the original Civilization (floppy disk version) back in middle school. Gradually went on to play other versions that came out later (including the Alpha Centauri version). I consider it one of the best strategy and overall enjoyable game I've ever played.
draw_down 9y ago
> because what else should a recently married game designer spend his evenings doing? :/
failrate 9y ago
If you want this history straight from Sid Meier's mouth, Soren Johnson's excellent podcast "Designer Notes" has a 4 part interview with the man: https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-1 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-2 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-3 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-4 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-...

552 points by doppp 9y ago

myth_drannon 9y ago

The only game that I can still play non-stop, 20 years later.

jerrysievert 9y ago
I was able to as well, until the iOS version didn't get updated, and is no longer playable on iOS 11. sadly, Pirates went the same way, as well as getting removed from the App Store.

jpm_sd 9y ago

This game blew. my. mind. when I was a kid. The first summer we had it, I played it eight hours a day on our IBM PS/2. When school was back in session, I wrote about it and drew maps for school projects. I dreamed about it.

w0de0 9y ago
What a joyful connection across generations: I did the same with Civilization III & a Compaq.
- Brendinooo 9y ago
  Civ III and a Compaq - same! I even got involved making multi-unit graphics over at CivFanatics.
bergie 9y ago
Sadly, its sequels still have that same pull. Bought Civ VI on the iPad around Christmas, and have lost countless weekends since...
- spdionis 9y ago
  * have enjoyed it for countless weekends since. Fixed that for you :).
  - untog 9y ago
    Not mutually exclusive!
    - matte_black 9y ago
      better to have enjoyed and lost than to never have enjoyed at all
psyc 9y ago
The game taught me some high-level things at an early age, like cities grow near water, transit lanes are like blood vessels, and food becomes people.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Romanulus 9y ago
  That's actually a really good point... it also goes on and shows how viscerally those cities are connected in terms of trade, movement of troops, and thus warfare/conquest. Thank goodness for Civilization on SNES, too. ;)
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  And then people become Soylent Green :)
  - kyberias 9y ago
    No spoiling of fine movie plots! :)
Erlangolem 9y ago
I used to love games like Oregon Trail and Spaceward Ho as a kid, and I remember dreaming about what games could be as a result. Then Civ came along and it was a revelation. My dreams were nothing, and I fell headfirst in love with Civ. It was the first game I could point to and say, “Do you see that? Can you see where this medium can go from here? The value and pleasure in it?” It was just so deep, and so far beyond anything else I’d ever seen. I think I can honestly say that it was the first game that was at least as good as a great book.
kakwa_ 9y ago
As a child, I loved this game. I remember spending hours on it, not knowing what I was doing. I had an english version of the game, and being 9 or 10 at the time, I didn't speak a word of english. It took me ages to understand that you could switch from despotism to another form of government (monarchy, republic, etc). I was always wondering why my cities were so small, even with irrigation and railroads everywhere. Also, I didn't have the manual, so with time, I started to learn the tech tree by heart (the "license" verification was based on knowing the parents of a given tech IIRC). I've also read the civilopedia countless times. I'm still proud to have beaten the game in Emperor ^^. I've also spent a lot of time on other Sid Meier's games like Railroad Tycoon or Colonization. Thank you for these lost hours.
- yread 9y ago
  same here. I was having great fun travelling around with the little carriage and exploring the world. Took like three playthroughs to realize you can and should build a city with it. And being super proud I've learnt a new english word - "granary" was probably in the first 100 english words i knew
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Try being given SimLife at 7. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimLife https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimLife Think my parents may have overreached a little on the educational software, there.
    - distances 9y ago
      I also had this as a kid. I think the game was quite lacking in the "game" aspect, though it was nice to have my new mutated orchid overtake the world.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- paulclinger 9y ago
  I had the same experience. I was a bit older, but didn't know much English either and had a printed copy of Civilopedia with me to study. It was fun experience both playing the game and studying English (and a bit of history) at the same time. I still occasionally play it with my kids.
pimeys 9y ago
If I wasn't so good at mathematics, my teacher would've probably called my mom for me being late so often when I just needed to play one more turn before bed and one more turn before going to school...
- adaven_xt 9y ago
  That's your problem right there. We convinced the teacher of it's historical merits and brought the game to class each day to play after we completed our assignments!
  - jwdunne 9y ago
    That's genius. I feel like I've missed crucial Civ time now!
  - isostatic 9y ago
    I had an RE gcse exam (a mock I think) in about 95. One question was "describe a creation story". So I wrote something very close to this: In the beginning the earth was without form, and void. But the sun shone upon the sleeping earth, And deep inside the brittle crust, massive forces waited to be unleashed. The seas parted, and great continents were formed. Mountains arose, earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves. Volcanoes erupted and spewed forth fiery lava, And charged the atmosphere with strange gasses. Into this swirling maelstrom of fire and air and water, The first stirrings of life appeared. Tiny organisms, cells and amoeba, clinging to tiny sheltered habitats. But the seeds of life grew, and strengthened, and spread, and diversified, and prospered. And soon every continent and climate teemed with life. And with life came instinct, and specialization, natural selection, reptiles, dinosaurs and mammals. And finally there evolved a species known as man. And there appeared the first faint glimmers of intelligence. The fruits of intelligence were many: Fire, tools, and weapons, The hunt, farming, and the sharing of food, The family, the village, and the tribe. Now it required but one more ingredient: A great leader to unite the quarrelling tribes, To harness the power of the land, To build a legacy that would stand the test of time: A CIVILIZATION!
jd20 9y ago
Also brings back memories for me. I was never good at managing many cities, focusing on a few megacities instead and opting for large scale nuclear war :) Kinda reminds me of another game I used to play around that time, Global Effect. Civ.exe was also the first game I customized. I was entertained to no end when I found out you could use a hex editor to change the strings. I rewrote the introductory text, and gave all the leaders new dialogue. That was also probably around when I started getting more interested in how games worked, rather than just playing them...
- Namrog84 9y ago
  As an amateur game developer and professional developer. I got into both because of similar origins of things. I do wonder though how modern games and tools are both easier to use but also more complex how it will shape the next few generations of devs and game designers.
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  RedEdit in the system 7 days was a godsend in my life. Hacking new sounds into Maelstrom. Changing character names in Pararena. Stumbling into learning what a sprite was.
  - kolpa 9y ago
    ResEdit. A word I haven't seen in decades, still one ECC pointer hop from top-of-mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResEdit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResEdit
    - kzrdude 9y ago
      And it was a staple of Escape Velocity plugin editing too. Very fun program for a child with an old mac at that time.
  - lowdest 9y ago
    The ResEdit days! I changed every sound in Marathon to the point it was unplayable. I had no idea what I was doing but I was fascinated.

Numberwang 9y ago

I'm thinking of trying it out for the first time. Which version is the best? I hear people don't really like the newer versions?

smacktoward 9y ago
The general consensus is that Civ 4 is the series' high point. I prefer Civ 5 myself, though. It set out to streamline the Civ formula, which led to a game a lot of purists thought was too simplified but I found quicker to play and more enjoyable.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  It's also worth remembering that Civ games are mostly judged in hindsight. By the time Civ 5 came out in 2010, most series fans would have been playing fully-expanded Civ 4, with all the rebalancing and new content that entails. Anyone who liked vassal states, Great Persons, corporations, or the complex space and culture victories was going off expansion content. First-release Civ 5 made some interesting alterations to the series, but had a lot of implementation issues. Unbalanced wonders, AI bugginess, and a late-game slog often made it feel bad regardless of the design choices. BNW-era Civ 5 brought a lot more logic to the tech tree, smoothed out broken features like "one free technology", and made the late game vastly more interesting. Honestly, I suspect we've only recently gotten to a 'fair' comparison of 4 and 5, with both of them feeling like classics in light of BE and 6.
  - aphextron 9y ago
    >Honestly, I suspect we've only recently gotten to a 'fair' comparison of 4 and 5, with both of them feeling like classics in light of BE and 6. Let's just pretend BE and 6 never happened.
    - patmorgan23 9y ago
      6 still has time to mature, I think the district system is neat and make you think about the geography of you empire more, but it defenitly needs some tuning. Also they really need to get a handle on the AI.

smacktoward 9y ago

Since Jimmy Maher's essays on gaming history like this one are so consistently popular on HN, allow me to point out that he has a (criminally under-subscribed, IMHO) Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/DigitalAntiquarian/ https://www.patreon.com/DigitalAntiquarian/

jogjayr 9y ago

As soon as I saw the screenshot from Empire with the unit actions menu ("Fortify", "Wait", "Sentry", "Disband") I was blown away. I had no idea the idea of this combat system was that old!

IAmEveryone 9y ago

I always preferred Colonization with its far more detailed economic mechanisms. In Civ, I never got over the feeling that my actions actually had little impact. Similar in SimCity: build all three types of zones, then build whatever services are in demand. There is nothing creative in those games. Intersperse commercial and residential zoning to reduce traffic? Nope. Build a school blocked in by coal power plants? Sure!

dwighttk 9y ago
man, why you building power plants you gotta replace every 50 years? Hydro or nothing. Colonization was great too...
- isostatic 9y ago
  Sc2k you could raise land, build water, then build hydro. It was dumb, but useful.
  - dwighttk 9y ago
    and even top it off with a water pump!
eropple 9y ago
Colonization is a great game from a mechanical perspective (aside from the AI bugs, which make it a slog to play today, and the crazy behaviors of the game when you have Ben Franklin). I find it difficult to play today in no small part because of the level of violence done to history. Civilization posits itself as almost a board game, and to me it largely strips itself of the historicity that its setting implies by turning it into overtly "gamey" stuff. Pottery implies Granary. Colonization personalizes a lot...and stuff like the way that native "converts" "flock to your mission in their city" when you attack it with artillery is a significant whitewashing of what anybody playing the game as an adult knows is going on. I don't think Brian Reynolds had ill intentions by any stretch; you can, of course, be peaceful in Col, and it's probably the best way to play at higher levels (France becomes really advantageous, especially stacking with the Pocahontas bonus). And the way the manual is written clearly indicates that they understood the parts of the historical record that the game leaves out. I have always assumed that there was fear from higher-ups at MicroProse that made them sanitize the game a little. But it mostly makes me wonder what a more honest game, made today, would look like. I might or might not have half an engine written on this laptop, as it happens...at some point I'd love to sit down and talk to Reynolds about that game. Everyone asks him about Alpha Centauri, but I really want to know about Col! (Also: while Civ4Col is pretty lame, I think its biggest mods, The Authentic Colonization and Religion and Revolution, take important steps toward a more honest representation of things. They're also really, really fun in ways Civ4Col was not.)

timavr 9y ago

The best thing about Civ, that player already has all the concepts from studying history.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
You've reversed cause and effect there :-)

evunveot 9y ago

>[Talking about the early strategy game Empire:] But the most relevant version for our purposes was created by Walter Bright, a 20-year-old student at the California Institute of Technology, in 1977. Bright himself later ported it to microcomputers, efforts which culminated in him selling the game to a small publisher called Interstel Bright would later be known for earning over 18000 karma on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=WalterBright https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=WalterBright Among other things :)

busterarm 9y ago
Empire (or rather, Empire Deluxe) is still today one of my all time favorite games.
- simonebrunozzi 9y ago
  I don't have a lot of time to play videogames anymore, but I'm like you - my favorite is Master of Magic (never surpassed, in my view). Sometimes I play it on Dosbox.
- pwang 9y ago
  Agreed! Empire Deluxe is my favorite! Sadly, I've never been satisfied with the Killer Bees "modernization" ports - the UI/UX is odd and deficient. I just want a good Empire Deluxe for tablet. Polytopia is the closest I've found, but it's not really the same.

weerd 9y ago

Great article. My favorite part was learning a new word: grognard! Makes me sad that I only got into the series at Civ5, which I enjoyed every bit of except for the ultra creepy 3D models of the leaders.... totally unnecessary in this kind of game. Also it's ridiculous to see Gandhi pop up and declare war on you. It was a good example of a typically superfluous feature tacked on to an otherwise decent piece of software.

DonaldPShimoda 9y ago
> Also it's ridiculous to see Gandhi pop up and declare war on you. Yeah, but it's a staple of the series now. If anything, I think an installment without a warmongering Gandhi would be disappointing! https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civilization-1653818245 https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civiliza...
- kimar 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing this! Quote from the article: In the original Civilization, it was because of a bug. Each leader in the game had an “aggression” rating, and Gandhi - to best reflect his real-world persona - was given the lowest score possible, a 1, so low that he’d rarely if ever go out of his way to declare war on someone. Only, there was a problem. When a player adopted democracy in Civilization, their aggression would be automatically reduced by 2. Code being code, if Gandhi went democratic his aggression wouldn’t go to -1, it looped back around to the ludicrously high figure of 255, making him as aggressive as a civilization could possibly be.
  - ericmcer 9y ago
    It kinda sucks that nowadays that would be fixed in the next patch and forgotten about as a minor bug in the games history. There was definitely something more artistic about the old software distribution style. Once your creation was given to the world it was able to take on its own life.
    - 9y ago

cpeterso 9y ago

Here are videos of two GDC 2017 talks about Civilization that I enjoyed: Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization (with Civilization creators Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts Absolutely No Pressure: Continuing a Successful Game Series with Civilization VI (with Civilization VI lead designer Ed Beach): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUl_3DydD7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUl_3DydD7U

sysbell 9y ago

I've played every Civ since the original. I love blowing the minds of kids who're playing it now, telling them how copy protection worked in the first game. Easily my favorite PC game of all time.

yread 9y ago

Amazing history. I had no idea about the relation to Avalon Hill or the gentleman's agreement between the two CEOs. Anyone knows where can I read more about it?

alatz 9y ago

For anyone who's interested in a detailed look at Sid Meier's history in the game industry from the man himself, I highly recommend this series of interviews from the Designer Notes podcast: https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-1 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... It's long (4 parts, each of are 1.5 - 2 hours), but worth it. The interviewer is Soren Johnson (one of the lead designers of Civ4) which makes for some great behind-the-scenes stories/insights.

wollstonecraft 9y ago

A propos, there is a longturn Freeciv game starting in two days: http://longturn.org/game/LT43/ http://longturn.org/game/LT43/ 30+ players, one turn per day.

hawktheslayer 9y ago

This was a really enjoyable read. The "aimlessness" of SimCity series resonates with me, and while I loved the game, when my arcologies shot off into space I felt a certain empty sadness. Its great to see talented designers addressing this in their games.

ordinaryperson 9y ago

In some ways I prefer the simplicity of Civ 1 over the current Civ 6. For example, in Civ 6 establishing trade routes becomes really important, but it's impossible to automate. So EVERY time a trader finishes a route you must MANUALLY select which city to trade with. By endgame you're clicking through a dozen trade routes every turn. Also, unless you decide to annihilate everyone prepare for NPCs to constantly pester you with stupid requests, like trading your capital for a resource of peaches. And then they can keep repeating the same requests. Why can't I just set my disposition to always automatically deny all incoming requests? The waging war by religion seems incomplete too, you only have two unit types: apostles and missionaries. I recommend 6 overall but Civ 1 doesn't overcomplicate it, it's still as great today as it was back then.

wolco 9y ago
Civ 3 feels like the right version with the level of detail vs fun.
- ordinaryperson 9y ago
  Civ 3 was good, I played way too much of that. The one big improvement of Civ 6 I can attest to is not having to build individual boats/ships for melee units once you have the appropriate skills -- just direct your helicopters to the oceans and they turn into transports. All good games. But a few simple adjustments would just really relieve a lot of the small annoyances.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    Civ 3 was great fun. I actually installed windows to play it when it came out. I remember one game, I was doing well, better than my neighbours, then oil appeared on the map. But not in my terrortry. This required an unprovoked war of expansion into a neighbour, and quickly, to gain control over this critical resource. Call to power was quite good too - with undersea, space, and future tech.
- ant6n 9y ago
  Civ 2 is better, it's got a bit less detail (i.e. less endless managing of cities...), and got the more aged graphics to boot. Then again, it's already got the the isometric perspective.

qxzw 9y ago

I have to recommend Vox Populi for Civ5. https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopuli/ https://www.reddit.com/r/civvoxpopuli/ Community Patch Project & Community Balance Patch. Still under regular development, a lot of (if not all) base game issues are ironed out. After playing this I couldn't force myself to endure Civ6 and its many flaws.

smogcutter 9y ago

For those interested in learning more about simulation games and the grognards that play them, I strongly recommend "Playing at the World" by Jon Peterson. It's everything you ever wanted to know about the origins and theory of simulation games, especially D&D, but were afraid to ask. Jimmy Maher's thoughts about "experientialist" games (linked in TFA) definitely echo Peterson. Worth a read for anyone interested in games.

cletus 9y ago

I'll chime in and say too that this game changed my life. I honestly don't even remember where I got it from. But there were days when I'd wake up around 11am, turn on my 486, start up Civ and then look outside and it was dark. It was crazy how much play I got out of this game. While I've enjoyed the successors to various degrees none has matched the life-alterigness [tm] of the first Civ. I sort of found Civ2 & 3 just more... tedious. Civ4 was huge for me however. In particular a mod called Fall From Heaven 2. I probably played this 20x as much as base Civ4. At least. Civ5 of course invented the hexagon, which people went nuts for for some reason. I played this some. Likewise I played Civ6 some. Oh and let's not forget Alpha Centauri, which seemed a little... underdeveloped? I mean it wasn't bad. It was good in fact. It just could've used some fleshing out in the sense of sequels to expand on the concept.

mercutio2 9y ago
Probably 50% of the CPU time executed on my 386SX was playing Civ. Good times, not good for my study habits though.

halo 9y ago

Does anyone know why the original Civilization (or CivNet) and Civilization 2 aren't avaliable to buy digitally?

finnjohnsen2 9y ago

Civilization and Orion 2 - childhood gaming life secured. I still buy, play and enjoy the sequals whenever they are released. I actually had a few good hours of Master of Orion just now this evening. <3

ajtulloch 9y ago

Related, and quite an interesting perspective: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/15/all-rise-and-no-fall-how-civilization-reinforces-a-dangerous-myth/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/15/all-rise-and-no-...

Maultasche 9y ago

I got Civilization really early on before it was obvious that it was going to be popular. I love reading the thick manual, strategy guide, and advances chart. I really enjoyed starting a civil war by capturing another civilization's capital city. There was one game where I was in the Americas and the Zulus (always crazily warlike and expansionist) had conquered the rest of the world. It looked like they were going to overwhelm me. So I parked an aircraft carrier and a bunch of transports off of southern Africa and captured their capital city with a surprise attack by overwhelming forces. The entire Zulu empire immediately started a civil war, with half of it becoming the Egyptians. I was unaware of the civil war feature when I did so (wasn't documented in the manual), and it really improved my opinion of the game. I ended up winning because the new Egyptian civilization and the Zulu civilization were too busy fighting each other to send enough against my forces. The technology capturing feature was great too. I was playing in the Americas one time, and I was hopelessly behind the Chinese. I had musketeers and cannons, while they had tanks. I launched a surprise attack with all the forces I could muster and captured a few of their cities, getting technologies such as the automobile by doing so. I was then able to produce tanks, and ended up modernizing myself by capturing more cities and stealing technology. I absolutely loved that game.

kakwa_ 9y ago
I did the same in one game. One of the civilization was way ahead of me in term of tech. Fortunatly I had a large empire, able to produce a lot of units, and this civilization was rater small. So I sent loads of units on this civilization to take one city. Countless units died, but in the end I was able to take over the city and gain one tech. What I did later was a bit of a cheat, but it worked. I removed all my units from the city, let the other civilization retake it, reconquered it the next turn and got another new tech. I did this for a few turns, and presto, I was on par with the other civilization in term of technology. Then, it was game over for all the other civilizations as I was also the biggest producer in term of industry. As for the capital, I did the trick to make a raid on it in another game. The motivation was a little different however. They were getting really close to launching to Alpha Centauri, taking their capital destroyed their spaceship. And I was able to win. I also remember playing the game way past its end (something like year 3000 or 4000). It was quite funny, because of global warming, all the terrains were converted to swamps or deserts.

Joshynox 9y ago

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tcbawo 9y ago

One aspect of the original Civ I always enjoyed was when a country could sometimes split into two. It wasn't in later versions, although I haven't played some of the more recent versions. I know myself too well (Civ games are great time sink).

distances 9y ago
I can confirm that this hasn't been a feature in any of the modern versions.
- omerhj 9y ago
  This probably doesn't qualify as a modern version, but I occasionally play Civ2 (the original Win32s version, in a 32-bit Windows 7 VM) and the empire splitting happens there as well.
Maken 9y ago
They kind of reintroduced it in the Rise and Fall expansion for Civ VI.

pavlov 9y ago

"An extremely rudimentary diplomatic model came in, with geopolitical relations boiled down to make war or make peace, demand tribute or pay tribute." Actually seems like a pretty accurate description of American diplomacy in 2018. "This week, I shall make peace with North Korea but demand tribute from Canada. Next week, we'll see what happens?"

jcadam 9y ago

Had the Amiga version of Civilization - I was absolutely hooked immediately. A little later on I got into CivNet on Windows 3.1 (Trumpet Winsock and SLIP!), and eventually Civ2 (the pinnacle of the series). I haven't really liked the latter games in the series. It just seems like something is missing :/

AceJohnny2 9y ago

Tangentially, the article mentions Global Conquest [1] as another "all-encompassing" strategy game that came out around the same period as Civilization. I have good nostalgic memories of Global Conquest, and every so often wish to replay it again. It is indeed much more limited in scope than Civ, focusing on the purely military aspect, but like Civ (and Empire before it) had the notion of cities producing units and forming the economic backbone of your faction. Its twist was the random events that would come up every 5 turns, applying effects for the next 5 turns, like Battle Fatigue (units wouldn't regen) or my favorite: Solar Flares, that would make the interface glitch and sometimes ignore clicks. I spent a great many hours playing multiplayer hotseat with Global Conquest. I wonder if anyone's re-implemented it as a web-game since... Edit: here's one DosBox/emscripten online playable version: https://classicreload.com/global-conquest.html https://classicreload.com/global-conquest.html [1] http://www.mobygames.com/game/global-conquest http://www.mobygames.com/game/global-conquest

orf 9y ago

For those here that love Civilization as I do, I recommend checking out Stellaris from Paradox (who make some.other popular strategy games). Imagine Civilization, but in space, and maybe crossed with the Foundation series by Asimov. It's really really good, and the new patch (2.0) makes it much more enjoyable (in true Civil fashion, where you wait for the mature DLC or big balancing summer patch to really bring the game into its stride).

cperciva 9y ago
I haven't tried Stellaris, but I've heard complaints that it suffers from a "don't know how well you're doing" problem, in that you can be many hours into a game before you encounter other aliens and immediately realize that you're so far behind that your eventual defeat is inevitable. Have you encountered that problem and/or do you know if it has been addressed?
- tidon12 9y ago
  Hm, The best answer as I see it is that the game allows you to set both the size of the galaxy (map) and the number of civilizations in it (competitors). If you are concerned with not seeing competition soon enough, you can always tweak those settings to ensure you do, although I personally have never had that issue.
- orf 9y ago
  Yeah it does happen, but that's part of the fun. It's not a 'set up a game, put X hours in and win' situation. If you do encounter that in a game just do what you'd perhaps do 'in real life': try and be friends with them and not tempt them to anihalate you until you're strong enough to defend yourself. That might mean giving them resources, or not taking stars near their borders. And obviously up your ship building capacity and start investing more resources there.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    That's an important point. Stellaris is intended to not be a defined, balanced race from planet to galactic empire, but more a "biography simulator" for a space-faring civilization: you may have older siblings and they will always be older than you. An important conceptual step away from the "Empire" roots that will be much easier to grasp for those who have been exposed to other Paradox titles like CK2 (where a single paythrough might go from count to emperor and back to count again, and then make the jump to a completely different religious group where a similar story unfolds under different rules) or EU4. But Stellaris fails to pull it off. There are a few sleeping giants which, after learning the hard way, you'll just ignore until you are ready to take them on. When you have mastered those pitfalls (and that isn't hard) you are back to the single-minded race for empire, with no interesting goals for those left behind due to some early blunder which stalled the resource throughput growth rate for a while.

rkagerer 9y ago

Am I the only obsessive-compulsive weirdo who would do stuff like this? https://imgur.com/a/ZDzzi https://imgur.com/a/ZDzzi

Mister_Snuggles 9y ago

I remember spending many hours playing Civilization. I wish someone like GOG would pick it up and package it for modern systems.

BeetleB 9y ago

When I was an undergrad, I had a roommate who was a metallurgy PhD student. When I mentioned this to high school friends, too many of them asked: "Wait - so he's involved in cannon technology?"

on_and_off 9y ago

Tangentially, this article reminded me of this great video about politics in video games : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_tdztHiyiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_tdztHiyiE Civilization is given as a great example of political views influencing a game in the win states it provides : militaristic cultural or economical domination, all very American values. That's a very imperialistic view of the world. It has certainly changed my perception of this great game (although not as much as it did for Sim City)

quadcore 9y ago

While it's a wonder in many ways, the issue with civilization, as with age of empire as it happens, is that it never have been strongly balanced. If you are a game developer and if you want to make money, I believe there is a $1B game in a balanced civilization. The way Starcraft solved balancing a strategy game is genius. Basically, most unit have the same damage / cost ratio, but they have different orthogonal abilities. Kinda remind me the weapons of Duke3D which none was better than the other, and all useful depending on the circumstances (little known was the fact that the default gun was absolutely deadly at distance).

DonHopkins 9y ago

>“Sid had a very clear notion: he was going to make it fun. He didn’t give a damn about anything else; it was going to be fun. He said, ‘I have absolutely no reservation about fiddling with realism or anything, so long as I can make it more fun.'” This reminds me of Will Wright's answer to the typical deep questions he's frequently asked about the design of SimCity: http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/9 http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/9 >Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games. >On the simulation model: ... >Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like "which ontological urban paridigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?" He replied, "I just kind of optimized for game play."

acjohnson55 9y ago
It's really all about reticulating splines

covfefenut 9y ago

I thought it was based on a board game? I like it because you run your own nation and see if you can do better.

egypturnash 9y ago
The end of the article touches on the computer game’s complicated relationship to the board game.

ssaddi 9y ago

I started playing the original Civilization (floppy disk version) back in middle school. Gradually went on to play other versions that came out later (including the Alpha Centauri version). I consider it one of the best strategy and overall enjoyable game I've ever played.

draw_down 9y ago

> because what else should a recently married game designer spend his evenings doing? :/

failrate 9y ago

If you want this history straight from Sid Meier's mouth, Soren Johnson's excellent podcast "Designer Notes" has a 4 part interview with the man: https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-1 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-2 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-3 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-4 https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-...