Civilization (computer game)

This article is about the 1991 game. For the sequels see Civilization II (1996), Civilization III (2001), and Civilization IV (2005). The term can refer to Galactic Civilizations or Galactic Civilizations 2, or the similar turn based game, Call to Power

Civilization, or Sid Meier's Civilization (which is the game's official name) is a turn-based strategy game created by Sid Meier for Microprose in 1991. The game's objective is to develop a great empire from the ground up or in other words: "...to build a legacy that would stand the test of time". The game begins in pre-historic times and the player attempts to expand and develop their empire through the ages until modern and near-future times. It is also called Civ or Civ I for short. It is generally acknowledged to be a pioneer in the genre of turn-based strategy games.

In 1996 Computer Gaming World named Civilization as #1 on its Best Games of All Time list on the PC.

Description

Civilization is a single-player game (although there was a separate multiplayer version called CivNet and both Civilization II and III have multi-player versions; Civilization IV, released late 2005, has advanced support for numerous types of multiplayer games). The player takes on the role of the ruler of a civilization starting with nothing but a single Settler unit (sometimes two of them). The player attempts to build an empire in competition with a number of other civilizations (from 1 to 7 and up to 31 in latest versions). The game is rigidly turn-based and requires a fair amount of micromanagement (although less than any of the Sim games).

Along with the larger tasks of exploration, war and diplomacy, the player has to make decisions about which improvements or units to build in each city, where to build new cities, and how to transform the land surrounding the cities for maximum benefit. From time to time the player's towns may be harassed by "barbarians", units with no specific nationality or leader. These threats disappear later in the game when no unclaimed land is available for the marauding barbarians to spawn from.

Before the game begins, the player chooses which historical civilization to play. As opponents, certain traits of specific civilizations do come through. The Aztecs are both fiercely expansionistic and generally extremely wealthy, for example. Other possible civilizations include the Americans, the Mongols, and the Romans. Each civilization is led by a historical figure, such as Mohandas Gandhi (Indians) and Josef Stalin (Russians).

The scope of the game is huge—larger than most other computer games. The game begins in 4000 BC, before the Bronze Age, and can last through to 2100 with space age technologies. At the start of the game there are no cities anywhere in the world: the player controls one or two Settler units, which can be used to found new cities in appropriate sites, and also alter terrain and build improvements such as mines and roads and, later, railroads.

As time advances, new technologies are developed; these technologies are the primary way in which the game changes and grows. Players choose from, at the beginning, advances such as Pottery, the Wheel, and the Alphabet to, at the close of the game, Nuclear fission and Space flight. Players gain a large advantage if their civilization is the first to learn a particular technology (the secrets of flight, for example). Most advances give access to new units, city improvements or derivative technologies: for example, the Chariot unit becomes available after the Wheel development, and the Granary building becomes available for building after the Pottery development. The whole system of advancements from beginning to end is called the Technology tree, or simply the Tech tree, a concept adopted in many other strategy games. Since only one tech may be "researched" at any given time, the order in which technologies are chosen makes a considerable difference in the outcome of the game and generally reflects the player's preferred style of gameplay.

Players can also build Wonders of the world in all the epochs of the game, subject only to possession of the necessary knowledge. These wonders are often important human achievements of society, science, and culture in human history, ranging from the Pyramids and the Great Wall in the Ancient age, to Copernicus' Observatory and Magellan's Expedition in the middle period, up to the Apollo Program, the United Nations, and the Manhattan Project in the modern era. Each of these wonders can only be built by one civilization and takes up a lot of resources to build (far more than most other city upgrades or units). However, each of these wonders provides unique benefits that can be gained by no other methods. Wonders can also be made obsolete by technological advances. See also List of Wonders in Civilization

The game can be won either by destroying all other civilizations or by becoming the first civilization to succeed at space colonization, in this case reaching the star system of Alpha Centauri. In the later installments of the series, other ways to win have been added, including cultural victory (buildings like Temples and Libraries add culture points to a civilization) and diplomatic victory (being elected United Nations Secretary-General).

Legacy

This game has been one of the most popular strategy games of all time, and has a loyal following of fans. The degree of popularity may be discerned from the observation that in an industry where the lifespan of a product typically averages 6 months or less, this game, (by means of all its versions and updates), has endured for over a decade and a half, with product being offered for sale the entire time in retail stores. This high level of interest has spawned a number of free versions, such as Freeciv and C-evo, and inspired similar games by other commercial developers, as well.

CivNet was released 1995 and was a remake of the original game with added multiplayer, improved graphics and sound, and Windows 95 support. Gameplay was almost identical to the original game. There were several methods of multiplayer, including LAN, primitive Internet play, hotseat, modem, and direct serial link.
Civilization II was released in 1996 and eventually spawned two expansion packs. The original version was designed by Brian Reynolds. Two expansion packs, Fantastic Worlds and Conflicts in Civilization were released in 1997 and 1998, respectively. A Multiplayer Gold Edition was released in 1999 that added multiple multiplayer features and included all of the features and scenarios from the first two expansion packs.
Test of Time was released in 1999. A remake of Civilization II, Test of Time added completely new animated graphics and several new scenarios, including the ability to play on multiple maps in a single game, adding a "three dimensional" element to the two dimensional game. This feature was not held over in succeeding versions of the game.
Civilization III was released in 2001. The original version was designed by Jeff Briggs and Soren Johnson. Two expansion packs followed: Play the World, which added multiplayer, and Conquests. The latest version of Civ III is Sid Meier's Civilization III Complete, which was released in 2003.
Civilization IV was produced by Firaxis and was released on October 24 2005. It was designed by Soren Johnson. This game is the first in the series which uses 3D graphics. An expansion for Civ4, Warlords, has been announced. It is to be first released on July,2006.

In 1992, Civilization won the Origins Award for Best Military or Strategy Computer Game of 1991.

In November 1996 Computer Gaming World's Anniversary Edition, Civilization was chosen the #1 of the 150 Best Games of All Time, and it was described as follows:

Inspiration

Meier admits to "borrowing" many of the technology tree ideas from a board game also called Civilization (published in the United Kingdom in 1980 by Hartland Trefoil (later by Gibson Games), and in the United States in 1981 by Avalon Hill). The early versions of the game even included a flier of information and ordering materials for the board game. In an ironic twist, there is now a board game based on the computer game version of Civilization.

Intellectual property status

Between Civilization II and III, Activision released a similar game Call To Power. They acquired the rights to the name for a time and took advantage of it by releasing the game using the property in its title.

As of late 2004, Atari, the latest publisher of a Civilization game sold the intellectual property of the Civilization brand to Take 2 Interactive Software, who will distribute Civilization games under the 2K Games label. Take 2 went public with news of the sale on January 26 2005.

Similar games

In 1994 Meier produced a similar game called Colonization. Colonization, while being very similar to Civilization, never became quite as popular. It has also been criticized for leaving out slavery and other historically important features in the creation of many nations and empires. Civilization IV, however, recognized slavery in the game play.

The game Alpha Centauri is also by Meier and is in the same genre, but with a futuristic/space theme. Many of the interface and gameplay innovations in this game eventually made their way into Civilization III and IV.

In 1993 Microprose published Master of Magic, a similar game but embedded in a medieval-fantasy setting where instead of technologies the player (a powerful wizard) develops spells, among other things. The game also shared many things with the popular fantasy card-trading game The Gathering.

In 1994 Stardock released Galactic Civilizations, a similar turn-based strategy game for OS/2 which became one of the best-selling games for that platform. They released a reprogrammed Windows version in 2003, and Dread Lords in 2006.

The designers of the historical strategy game Age of Empires received much inspiration from Civilization, with many similar features (e.g. technologies, wonders). The main difference here is that Age of Empires is not turn-based, but plays in real-time.

Civilization's introduction

An introduction movie shows when a new game is started in Civilization. The movie was added to give players something to look at while the game world was being created. Later editions of Civilization no longer include such an introduction, presumably because world creation can be done almost instantaneously. The exception to this is Civilization IV, which contains an updated version of this introduction, narrated by Leonard Nimoy; the player can, however, skip this, as their world will be created in a fraction of the duration of the introduction. The following words form the actual introduction of Civilization:

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. The continents shifted, mountains arose. Earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves. Volcanoes erupted and spewed forth fiery lava and charged the atmosphere with strange gases.

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 quarreling tribes to harness the power of the land to build a legacy that would stand the test of time:

a CIVILIZATION!

The game pulled the introductory text from a text file located in the game's computer directory, and it was possible to alter the text file to manipulate the game's introduction (sometimes to comedic effect).

Platforms

Civilization was originally developed for DOS running on a PC. It has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms (including Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, PlayStation, N-Gage and Super Nintendo) and now exists in several versions. Civilization III is available on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. The latest version, Civilization IV, was released on October 25, 2005 by 2k Games. Civilization IV currently runs only on Windows and Macintosh computers. The Macintosh version of Civilization IV was released on June 30, 2006 by Aspyr Media.

Points of controversy and criticism

While a lot less amenable to the same type of criticism as the sister-game Colonization, there are some elements of Civilization that are considered controversial because they lack neutrality: the choice of leaders of the civilizations (which have also been changed in the various versions), the fact that some civilizations are left out of the game altogether, and the choices for Wonder of the World (e.g. replacing Hoover Dam with Three Gorges Dam in Civilization IV).

A topic of critique is the trivialization of historically important, but sensitive, topics such as religion and slavery. The games have managed to handle these aspects in a relatively generic manner.

The assignment of 'traits' to particular leaders has been a source of some criticism. Some have questioned whether the game is simply trying to re-create history instead of allowing a player to imprint their own traits onto the developing game. Others have considered such trait assignments racist, since some of these traits are perceived to be applied to a general group of people instead of specific leaders.

There is also considerable discussion over the AI used in the game. In order to compensate for its limitations and provide a decent challenge to the human player, it is known that computer players (often referred to collectively as the 'AI') are favored with an in-game set of advantages. In particularly glaring undocumented occurrences of these advantages being revealed, players often find themselves in the odd position of playing a game where they don't know the rules.

With the most recent addition to the series, Civilization IV, some concern has arisen that the game has acquired some qualities of bloatware and creeping featurism, for example emphasizing high detail graphics instead of concentrating on memory management or the intracies of game balance.

The most contentious aspect of the game occurs in combat when a modern unit is fighting an obsolete or ancient unit. That ancient unit can sometimes win what most players consider to be an impossible battle. The most notorious of this is the infamous "spearman defeats tank" phenomena in which ancient combat units could deafeat modern ones(such as tanks, and amazingly enough, aircraft) due to status modifiers such as terrain, fortifications, and veteran status. However, in Civilization IV, the most recent iteration of the game, this has been made a lot less likely. "Veteran players of Civilization were occasionally disconcerted when a veteran phalanx unit fortified behind city walls on a mountain would defeat an attacking battleship. Mathematically it was possible but the image just didn't sit right. How could ancient spearmen destroy a modern steel warship?"

The historian and anthropologist Matthew Kapell has published an essay critical of the Civilization series. It suggests that the game uses unique American myths of progress and the frontier in culturally elitist fashion. It can be found here: “Civilization and its Discontents: American Monomythic Structure as Historical Simulacrum.” Popular Culture Review Vol. XIII, No. 2 (Summer): 129-136.

Trivia

Sid Meier was the third major designer to plan a computer version of Civilization, but the first to actually carry out that plan.
Danielle Bunten Berry planned to start work on the game in 1985, after completing The Seven Cities of Gold at Electronic Arts. The success of Seven Cities, however, led Bunten and producer Joe Ybarra to instead opt for a sequel, Heart of Africa. Bunten never returned to the idea of Civilization. Ironically, Meier's designs of Pirates and Colonization both contain elements of Bunten's The Seven Cities of Gold.
Don Daglow, designer of Utopia, the first sim game, began work programming a version of Civilization in 1987. He dropped the project, however, when he was offered an executive position at Broderbund, and never returned to the game.
While it can be difficult to obtain a copy of the original game, one can download a demo here.

External links

The Official Take2 ''Civilization IV website
Civilization Lost, a Civilization community
The Official Firaxis Civilization III website
Apolyton: site about most games in the Civilization genre
Civfanatics: site covering Civ I, Civ II, Civ III, and Civ IV.
Planet Civilization
CivGuide: Strategy and more for Civilization IV'
civ.org.pl: a bilingual site (English and Polish) covering the majority of civilization-style games
Civilization FAQ

Free Civilization clones

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