
The Game of Everything, Part 1: Making Civilization - doppp
https://www.filfre.net/2018/03/the-game-of-everything-part-1-making-civilization/
======
Maultasche
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.

~~~
yodsanklai
I never played Civilization (got bored of video games when I was 16-17) but
Civilization always intrigued me. Maybe I should give it a try. Are there
modern versions of the game would the original version still be fun today?

~~~
harrygeez
Try Freeciv. It's inspired by the original game and it's open source too :)

[http://www.freeciv.org/](http://www.freeciv.org/)

------
jpm_sd
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.

~~~
jd20
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...

~~~
alanfalcon
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
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
And it was a staple of Escape Velocity plugin editing too. Very fun program
for a child with an old mac at that time.

------
evunveot
>[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
Empire (or rather, Empire Deluxe) is still today one of my all time favorite
games.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
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.

------
IAmEveryone
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!

~~~
eropple
_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.)

~~~
secabeen
The amazing thing for me about Colonization is that it still runs on
relatively recent versions of windows. Just stick the wing.dll file in your
system32 directory, and run it.

~~~
eropple
Does it? I've never tried. I instead use GOG's DOS version, because I really
like the DOS version's music when rendered through MIDI.

I wonder if Colonization for Windows fixes the trade route bugs though...

------
alatz
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-...](https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-1)
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.

------
smacktoward
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/)

------
DonHopkins
>“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
It's really all about reticulating splines

------
ordinaryperson
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.

~~~
kibwen
_> The waging war by religion seems incomplete too, you only have two unit
types: apostles and missionaries._

There are actually four or five: missionaries (inexpensive weak offensive
unit), apostles (expensive strong offensive unit with random unique bonuses),
inquisitors (defensive unit), and gurus (support unit, heals adjacent units).
There are also warrior monks, which only one religion may have and, despite
being melee units rather than religious units, will spread their religion when
defeating another unit in combat.

I'm still a little torn on the religious mechanics in 6, but it's certainly
the most involved the series has ever made it, and probably strictly better
than 5's implementation. Your points about AI trading are true to home, though
there have been a few improvements to trade routes in patches and the recent
expansion (by adding a "repeat route" button to the trader menu, and also
generally by nerfing trade routes so you generally have fewer of them).

~~~
Jagerbizzle
I introduced my girlfriend to Civ 6 after seeing her play a bunch of
similarly-veined strategy games on her phone. She was hooked within days so we
started a 'hot-seat' campaign via Steamcast and passed the controller back and
forth for hours on the couch.

At some point it became clear that my path to victory was an all out religious
assault, and effectively all I was doing was micromanaging my missionaries and
apostles.

This got old extremely quickly in the hot seat format. I'd kill for an
engaging 2 player couch-coop gameplay mode in here that didn't make us hate
each other.

------
pavlov
_" 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?"

------
tcbawo
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
I can confirm that this hasn't been a feature in any of the modern versions.

~~~
omerhj
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.

------
orf
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
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?

~~~
orf
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
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.

------
weerd
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
> 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-
civiliza...](https://kotaku.com/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-
civilization-1653818245)

~~~
kimar
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
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.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
I mean, from a gameplay perspective it's absolutely more reasonable for this
bug to have been fixed.

That said, the best user experience does not always derive from the perfect
game. What the developers have to do is compare the experience for a new user
(who knows nothing of Gandhi's warmongering history in the Civilization games)
to the experience of someone who is familiar with the series and might even
expect such behavior.

They clearly couldn't keep the old rule in place — that Gandhi suddenly gains
the highest aggression value possible is unexpected for new players. Instead,
they simply made Gandhi have a slightly elevated aggression — something that
new players can handle ("Oh, haha, it's funny because it's Gandhi I guess")
and something that old players will recognize. It's a good middle ground.
(Note that they have kept around Gandhi's elevated aggression in more recent
incarnations, though they have reduced its effect somewhat.)

But, again, from a pure gameplay perspective, the bug should have been fixed.

~~~
eropple
_> Note that they have kept around Gandhi's elevated aggression in more recent
incarnations, though they have reduced its effect somewhat_

Kind-of. Civ 6 makes him _sneaky and shitty_ aggressive rather than just
straight-out homicidal. This matches my experiences pretty well:
[https://kotaku.com/gandhi-is-still-an-asshole-in-
civilizatio...](https://kotaku.com/gandhi-is-still-an-asshole-in-civilization-
vi-1788710568)

~~~
kibwen
In Civ 6 the Gandhi AI will actually never declare war on you, AFAIK. For the
instance where a human player is controlling Gandhi and declares war, he has a
unique cutscene where he lampshades the absurdity of the situation. The Gandhi
AI does have an uncharacteristically large chance of "randomly" spawning with
the agenda that makes him revere nuclear weapons, as a throwback to Civ 1.

~~~
eropple
I have had Civ 6 Gandhi declare war on me, but only extremely early in the
game. Which suggests that, as the Kotaku article indicates, he'll only do so
if he won't be warmongering.

~~~
engi_nerd
I'm in the middle of a game of Civ VI right now. Gandhi will not stay happy
with me and he keeps declaring war on me every 40 turns or so. But I just took
his capital so let's see if we can get him to knock it off.

------
cpeterso
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)

------
jogjayr
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!

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

~~~
jerrysievert
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.

------
qxzw
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.

------
failrate
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-...](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)

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

------
wollstonecraft
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.

------
quadcore
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).

------
on_and_off
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)

------
BeetleB
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?"

------
smogcutter
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.

------
AceJohnny2
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)

------
hawktheslayer
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.

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

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

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

------
jcadam
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 :/

------
ssaddi
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.

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

~~~
fjsolwmv
You've reversed cause and effect there :-)

------
finnjohnsen2
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

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

------
yread
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?

------
covfefenut
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
The end of the article touches on the computer game’s complicated relationship
to the board game.

------
Numberwang
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?

~~~
jbob2000
Definitely a tough question because of people's nostalgia for the older
versions.

Civ 4 is the best version of "classic civ", so if you want a modern take on 1,
2, or 3, go with Civ 4.

Civ 5 was dramatically re-developed. Instead of a square grid (4 possible
movement directions for a unit) they moved to a hex grid (6 directions!). And
they removed unit stacking, so you don't have these army hoards on single
tiles that can wipe out everything in their path. They changed a lot and I
think it was for the better - a lot of quality of life improvements. It plays
much better than 4 while still retaining the classic civ "just one more turn"
feeling.

Civ 6 is too much. It's got too many features and too much user interface. It
feels like a chore to play some times. The music is better in Civ 6 than 5,
but nothing beats Civ 4's Baba Yetu.

~~~
dangerbird2
The square grid actually gave eight directions of movement, but introduced the
problem of diagonal and parallel moves being different distances

~~~
distances
Yep, and I think the hexagon is thus quite superior both in logical sense and
aesthetically.

