
Why ‘Civilization’ is a political masterpiece - pseudolus
https://unherd.com/2020/09/why-civilization-is-a-political-masterpiece/
======
haberman
I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was
my favorite, especially since it had the best music. I sing old music
professionally, and it was such a treat to enter a new era and hear some of
the best musicians in the world singing actual music of the era:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g7jOKLUus8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g7jOKLUus8)

(the music in that video is by John Sheppard, a decidedly Renaissance composer
(not Medieval, as indicated by the game), but the music is so good that I can
absolutely forgive that inaccuracy).

Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that
every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late
game. Even at the fastest setting, a full game seems to take at least 10-20
hours. Sometimes I just want to go through the tech tree in a different world
without having to spend such large amounts of time on it.

~~~
cableshaft
I've noticed that too, I only play one game a year over a couple of days in a
single weekend, usually, because of the time commitment.

How long of a CIV game would you like to play? What do you think is worth
streamlining out of the experience? What do you think absolutely needs to stay
in to get the feeling you want from these types of games? (This goes to anyone
who feels it's too long, btw).

~~~
cableshaft
To be clear, I enjoy a long Civ game from time to time too and wouldn't want
Civilization to be a different game. But I'm wondering, as a game designer
myself, if there's something worth exploring that's shorter format. There's a
lot of those in board game form, but not so much for video games, at least not
that I can think of.

~~~
tgb
What about something taking inspiration from the "roguelike" fad? Some of
those intend for runs to take < 1 hour and yet still have interesting choices
and variation due to randomization. Seems like a plausible fit for a civ-
quick. There you often have some randomized choice of features to exploit and
don't get access to all of them every run, thereby streamlining the game
process.

------
samvher
I have spent countless hours on this game (especially Civ 5) - it just felt so
deep. It actually triggered quite some interests down the road around
archeology, history, military strategy. Reading about some historic character
I really often thought "ha - I know this person from Civilization" and the
same game has you thinking about things like geographic choke points for
someone else's navy and things like that.

I'm really hoping that at some point a version of Civilization will come out
with a more realistic AI (I haven't really looked into this but assume that a
lot more is possible now than 10 years ago given all recent advancements). To
me that felt like the main thing that caused me to lose interest at some
point, interaction with AI players was too scripted and a harder difficulty
level just meant more units and faster progression for AI players. I never got
into multiplayer, I imagine it would be way too slow to keep my attention.

~~~
extremeMath
Civ5 didn't allow unit stacking which left artillery vulnerable. I couldn't
get into it.

Civ 4 4ever

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I never got that into Civ, so maybe it is mostly my ignorance of 'proper' play
speaking, but I actually rather liked the change to non-stacking units as it
seemed to make the combat more tactical and less an exercise in simply who had
the bigger numbers.

~~~
reincarnate0x14
The two big problems with it were that a) the computer player coding was just
shockingly bad at dealing with it, particularly around any sort of geographic
chokepoints, and b) it was incredibly tedious to deal with moving more than a
handful of units.

Many other games like Total War series or Age of Wonders dealt with the
overall question by having split strategic and tactical game modes, and
they're hardly alone in that. Civ5 and 6 tried to keep the bastard child of
those two game concepts in the same strategic-map and it just doesn't work
that well.

~~~
recursivecaveat
There are a lot of subtle consequences of 1UPT as well. You can't let the
player produce too many units, or the whole map will lock up. You can't make
units too expensive though, or they'll just be hitting next-turn 40 times
between each production in the ancient era. So tiny cities have to punch above
their weight, and big ones below. Once you do that though you have to heavily
penalize expansion. What they really needed was to increase the tile-density
of the map several times, give room to maneuver. That would seriously change
the city management gameplay though, potentially make it too tedious.

~~~
reincarnate0x14
I can see a split of using large hexes for cities and strategic deployment but
having 7 child hexes inside each strategic one for precise unit movement
working out. Effectively limiting stacks to 7 units for combat, and also
potentially letting a few groups of units move around each other with multiple
turns of micromanagement.

The corp/army mechanic could also be tied into that.

------
iso1631
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!

------
pjc50
Definitely a hugely formative game for me and a lot of other people, that
encouraged you to learn the real history while writing your own. While there
have been a lot of Civ games, I'd say that there was a "trilogy" of Civ,
Colonization, and Alpha Centauri.

As a brit, most of the US history I know comes from Colonization. It also had
far more of a focus on the economy; military action was so expensive that it
was limited to skirmishes until the War of Independence (although this didn't
seem to impair the AI). It was more grounded in real history, although there
was a recent controversy when it was pointed out that it had almost entirely
erased slavery.

Alpha Centauri was explicitly a sequel to Civ, set after the disastrous
fragmentation of the space colonists into warring splinter groups. Inspired by
the _Mars_ trilogy, it put a lot of effort into building a narrative universe
around the faction personalities. An epistolary novel in help texts. Possibly
my favourite of the three, as you could assemble your own modular units in
unusual combinations for specific purposes.

~~~
anotherhue
Much of the Alpha Centauri lore comes from Frank Herbert's "The Jesus
Incident" [0]. Nerve runners, living planet, etc.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jesus_Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jesus_Incident)

~~~
polytely
Oh very cool, I didn't know that, I really like the story bits in Alpha
Centauri, I love how each faction has an arc. I have never found another game
that scratched the same itch as Alpha Centauri, truly an exceptional game.

~~~
swyx
same, it was a huge part of my child hood. just leaving this here in case any
other SMAC fans havent seen it
[https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/](https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/)

------
devit
While Civilization games are fun for new players, ultimately they are quite
flawed:

\- In Civ 1-3 infinite city sprawl is optimal, which is tedious and unfun

\- In Civ 5-6 one-unit-per-tile creates gimmicky non-strategical combat,
forces you to move units individually and is very hard for the AI to use

\- All the original versions have horrible AI (so bad that you could
reasonably request a refund), although the Better AI mods for Civ4 and Civ5
have somewhat passable AI

\- While the early game is really fun since you have few very impactful
decisions, all versions get very tedious by the mid/end-game where you need to
make a ton of minor decisions for every city and unit in the empire

The last problem is especially hard to fix, and I don't think any similar game
has solved it.

~~~
3131s
I always liked Alpha Centauri the most out of all these games.

I don't think it has any of these problems except for maybe the last (you can
automate most repetitive actions, but the control is somewhat too coarse).

~~~
nicolapede
Alpha Centauri is one of my all time favourite game. Out of curiosity, does
anyone know if it is possible to replicate the Human Hive strategy from Alpha
Centauri in other Civ games?

------
jcadam
I probably played Civ1 the most, on the Amiga back in the day.

IMO, Civ II was the best in the series, and if I find myself craving a game of
Civ, I go for FreeCiv. Never tried Civ VI, the last few iterations just did
not hook me the way the original did. If I'm looking for a good world sim, I
like the Paradox series of games - Europa Universalis, Victoria, etc.

~~~
skatanski
Similarly played Civ1 on Amiga 500 a lot. Didn’t know how to create save
disks, so just left it running overnight. No game again reproduced that
feeling of marvel, getting to know its mechanics first time.

It does feel that Paradox games create a better simulation. Even Crusader
Kings, albeit on a slightly different level.

~~~
brobinson
I like Crusader Kings more than all the others because it results in amazing
stories as it's character-focused rather than focused on faceless nations
(Victoria, HOI, EU, etc.).

I can tell you about the time I conquered most of east India and became a
king, swore fealty to the emperor of Tibet for protection, married my daughter
to his son for a non-aggression pact with him, then somehow my daughter later
ends up becoming empress, and one of my fellow vassals (my daughter is my
liege at this point) starts pushing my _wife's_ weak claim on the empire of
Tibet in a civil war...

And I have tons of stories like that. I have basically none from other grand
strategy and civilization management games in comparison.

------
WalterBright
Civilization was apparently inspired by Empire.

[http://classicempire.com/](http://classicempire.com/)

(Yes, I wrote Empire.)

~~~
thewileyone
Empire was an awesome game! I spent hours and hours on Empire ... until
Civilization came out unfortunately.

Thank you so much Mr Bright! You deserve much love!

~~~
WalterBright
Love won't pay my bills, I want money! Just give me money!

\-- apologies to the Flying Lizards

~~~
coolgeek
A+ obscure music reference!

~~~
WalterBright
It's my theme song!

------
Nasrudith
One thing about civ which feels a bit annoying in missed potential is the lack
of divergent tech and societal paths when going different directions and
choices in directions. Say that if you are in a Inca like geography you have
no real reason to develop the wheel until you expand far because it just isn't
worth it. Or at every level being able to choose between "swarmer" and
"warrior elite" strategy where what pays off varies by tech level just like
real life.

I understand some of it is design "awkwardness" related from sheer detail of
modeling oddball situations alone. Combined with gameplay of "traps" from the
freedom to try things which seem like a good idea but run into problems or
silly exploits which work mechanically but make no sense.

~~~
bcrosby95
I think Stellaris does tech in an interesting way. Tech trees are much flatter
than civ, and you can't outright pick a specific tech to work - you have a
choice from a random set, and when you finish that one you get another random
set.

What shows up in that set is also based upon what is in your empire's space.

------
dunnevens
For those looking for a stripped down Civ, take a look at Polytopia (iOS /
Android). They've done a mostly brilliant job in creating a very minimalistic
Civ-style 4x game. Has two modes: a 30 turn game in which the player with the
highest score wins. Building wonders and temples gives more points than
conquest, so that mode is a very stripped down version of a cultural victory
goal. And then there's the free-for-all mode, with no turn limitations and the
only possible victory is conquest. I mostly play the latter.

There's a simple tech tree. Diplomacy is done in an interesting way, and I
wish more games would emulate it. There's no direct negotiations, relationship
scores, or anything like that. Instead, you have to measure how they feel
about you by the way they act. They give you a greetings when you first meet.
If they laugh at you or are suspicious, then they'll probably attack
immediately. If they worship you or condescendingly pat you on the head, then
they won't attack for a while.

And this is also built on by judging them based on further actions. If you
move a unit adjacent to theirs, and they don't attack it, then you know
they're trustworthy for a time. And you can subtly manipulate their feelings
towards you by doing things like not counter-attacking even when they're
attacking you. This is useful in a multi-front war when you're losing. You can
make the decision to concentrate an offensive on one front when your defenses
can possibly hold on a second front. If the enemy isn't hellbent on your
destruction, they'll possibly just stop attacking and do something else. If
you accurately guess that they hate another nation more than they hate you,
then attacking the hated nation will get them to consider you acceptable. It's
a bunch of big gambles and an interesting ones. Judging the other nations'
attitudes towards you by intuition alone.

That definitely adds a little nuance to the conquer-the-world bits. Most games
are over in 30 minutes or less, though occasionally they stretch out when
you're evenly matched. Even then, it's rarely more than an hour.

~~~
thursday0987
in my opinion, "Hexonia" is a slightly better variant (at least on Android).
The graphics are better, it uses a hex grid instead of a square grid, and the
game play is slightly better.

Polytopia is better in some ways - some of the specialty races introduce
completely new concepts/units/gameplay mechanic, while all the Hexonia races
are essentially the same with only some units being different between them.

Try both if you're curious. neither of them have ads that break gameplay.

------
rektide
Wish we better enabled others to dabble in building modest world sims.

It's hard when there's a whole tech level grind that also has to tick along in
the background, fueling the sense of growth & achievement & pushing players
ahead. But collecting resources, establishing population centers, weighing
civil & diplomatic & religious opinions against one another... seems like a
really interesting proposition that we make not just sandboxes but sandbox
makers.

~~~
msla
> It's hard when there's a whole tech level grind that also has to tick along
> in the background, fueling the sense of growth & achievement & pushing
> players ahead.

I have a real problem with how tech levels are implemented in Civilization, at
least in the variants I'm familiar with: There's just a few ways to progress,
and advances are always better. Technology is not fitted to the environment,
like how wheels don't make a lot of sense on roads which are rocky and often
stairstepped up steep slopes; nope, the whole concept of "Inventing Wheel"
_not_ being a necessary step to further advancement is lost on the game, even
if it's empirically possible to build advanced civilized societies without
them. It's like it's insulted by wheel-less-ness, and never understands that
facts don't care about its feelings.

Further, there's no trade-offs: Iron swords are better than bronze, and never
you mind that _common_ iron is _worse_ than bronze; unless you have truly
outstanding Damascus steel, you're using sponge iron at best. Of course,
sponge iron doesn't require tin, so if you're cash-strapped or just lost a
tin-producing province, well, Iron Age ahoy!

[https://www.e-education.psu.edu/matse81/node/2129](https://www.e-education.psu.edu/matse81/node/2129)

I wouldn't care about this stuff if it weren't for the pernicious effect of
these games on peoples' _de facto_ history education. They think that if it
works that way in Civilization, it must have worked that way in reality, and
it's hard to remove a bad education.

~~~
mywittyname
> Further, there's no trade-offs: Iron swords are better than bronze, and
> never you mind that common iron is worse than bronze; unless you have truly
> outstanding Damascus steel, you're using sponge iron at best.

In civ 4, there was a tradeoff, bronze enabled ax warriors while iron enabled
swordsman. Ax warriors were weaker than swordsman, but they received a bonus
again melee units, ensuring they'd win a battle against swordsman.

~~~
sadfklsjlkjwt
And yet historically nearly everyone used spears.

------
MrUssek
I think that Errant Signal's video on Civilization offers a really interesting
counterpoint to this view. When you think about it, despite it's cheap
cosmopolitanism, it has an extremely narrow contemporary liberal view of
civilization, government, technology and "progress". I think it's worth
looking into.

[https://youtu.be/xBlEscMLjy0](https://youtu.be/xBlEscMLjy0)

~~~
ng12
I don't know. This feels pretty similar to criticizing Call of Duty for not
exploring peaceful resolution of conflict enough. Civilization is just a skin
on a resource management game; popular history is the theme. Criticizing it
for not adequately exploring the intricacies and assumptions of western
history is missing the point.

~~~
vkou
If you can, as TFA, plumb it for deeper political meaning, you can also, like
Errant Signal, criticize it for that political meaning being a glorification
of a rather weird, authoritarian-nationalist (nearly fascist, with the game's
single-minded obsession in directing all resources, human or otherwise towards
the service of a single-purpose state) world view, _that does not even make
any sense_ in 95% of the time periods that the game covers.

Your argument can certainly be made, but it can also be turned against the
article this thread is about, with similar levels of success.

Errant Signal is not saying that the game is bad. It is saying that the
political picture its mechanics paint isn't one with any depth to it.

------
spiritplumber
Alpha Centauri is where it's at for me.

Some gushing:
[https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/](https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/)

~~~
RangerScience
Ach, had such hope for the remake. Alas :/

Kinda hoping there'll be a new attempt now that core Civ has climate change,
since those mechanics could (I hope?) be repurposed for terraforming.

------
richardanaya
𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴

~~~
jorge-d
CK is really great, but if one really like to learn things about history /
geopolitics while playing a game I don’t thing any game is as rich as EU4 :)

~~~
wellthisisgreat
I never really gave it a fair chance because it seems like more like an
optimization exercise than actual experience.

The absolutely mind blowing part about CK for me is that I DO NOT MIND LOSING
at all. Of course I am playing on Ironman always so there is no /save/reload.
It is so AMAZING damn.

For example: I would start the new dynasty and the whole thing collapses
spectacularly after 3rd generation - great -wow - I had a blast.

I spend like 2 weeks on and off conquering half the world, then one evening I
get bored, start doing crazy stuff and everything collapses - wow - what a
ride.

I start out small, my wife dies can't find a fertile concubine my brother
assassinates me, my game session is suddenly over in like 30 minutes. I am
absolutely delighted. I don't feel like I should correct it all, salt the
earth, become the richest king ever etc. etc. It just doesn't matter.

Any other game was always - win win win. Crusader Kings is really a
masterpiece. I think it's probably the most innovative game since 1990s when
RTS / FPS / MMORPG / MMOFPS etc. were suddenly invented seemingly overnight.
Sure it's possible to make an indie title that focuses on one interesting
mechanic, or produce a game with a decent story and touching dialogues or
create a memorable character. But to take something as ancient as a grand
strategy (+RTS) genre in all its complexity (economics, armies, diplomacies)
and to make something that feels REALLY brand new and also is an absolute
blast to play and has one of the strongest "one more year (turn)" hook? Wow.

I didn't experience a joy of revelation the first contact with CK-II gave me
since maybe Dune-2 when I was blown away by the fact that each of those little
soldiers and vehicles are living and breathing and are following my orders in
real-time.

~~~
RangerScience
Ever try Stellaris?

It's been pretty cool watching the studio gradually add to the game, getting
more of the CK/EU4 "losing is fun" (and overall complexity) into it.

Their development model is really something I can get behind.

~~~
wellthisisgreat
Yeah I tried Stellaris, but it's more like a traditional 4X game so you're
managing resources. There are some stories there but they don't just emerge
every 5 minutes like in CK.

Was just thinking today that the connection with real world is what makes CK
work probably. You already have some preconceptions of who the people on the
map are or at least imagine very easily based on your ideas about their
descendants from today. Also the geography makes sense.

Space is exciting but it's unknown and the races are made up and at least for
me, it's hard to relate to them on the level that I would relate to some
obscure Byzantium noble.

I wonder what would it take to make the emergent storytelling work in a
completely made up world the way it works in CK world.

And yes their development process is amazing and an example really.

~~~
RangerScience
I don't know either, but I think they're figuring it out release by release. I
played it when it first came out, and a bunch a few months ago, and there's
way more, although yeah, not like CK... yet.

------
rkagerer
I love this series. I didn't like how many clicks it took each turn to play a
Civ3 / Conquests game by email, so I wrote a helper that would automatically
launch the game when you opened an email attachment, read pixels from the
screen, identify known patterns of graphics, and send clicks to "autopilot"
the game into loading up the save and entering your turn. When you finished
your turn, it would zip the file back up and send it to the next player. It
was a little buggy but proof of concept worked well. Didn't get much chance to
use it myself, but later gifted the code to some programmers who ran a fan
site and were interested in it.

------
extremeMath
My biggest shock with Civ was funding out that I was a military dictator at
heart.

I started with hope of a cultural victory. I gave away technology and trade at
a disadvantage to keep aggressive allies on my side.

Then genghis khan attacks me unprovoked despite previously good relations.

He sacked a city and I decided he needed to be completely removed from the
game for peace. So after stabilizing, I built up a huge military and defeated
him.

But now I had a huge military draining my resources. And alexander was pretty
aggressive. Before you knew it, my wife was begging me not to attack the last
survivor, Gandhi. Which I defeated and achieved world domination.

I was literally horrified at myself.

~~~
arkitaip
Games inherent the biases of their creators, so it's more a reflection of them
than you.

~~~
asgard1024
If anything, I think Civ tried to subvert the bias of war games by allowing
other types of victories than just a military one.

------
wellthisisgreat
If you are remotely interested in strategy games check out Crusader Kings III
It's phenomenal (I mean CK II was phenomenal and CKIII just updates it). Truly
a unique experience.

I cannot stand any games that have NPC interactions with the only exception of
CK. It's the closest you can get now to experiencing what it is to read and
write a historical fiction at the same time (speaking from experience).

~~~
toeget
I've tried to get into CK three times and I just don't get it. I love all the
other paradox games (well, except stellaris, scifi setting is not my cup of
tea). I love EU4 because it's a strategy game, where I can replay history and
explore alternative paths. But with CK2 and CK3 now it's just not clicking for
me. Why should I care about my in-game brother's wife's fictional son?

------
PeterCorless
I used to love, love, love Civ games. Civ 4 was definitely my favorite as
well. However, just as a kid I finally graduated from boardgames like "Risk"
to more sophisticated fare (SPI and AH games), with Civ I finally graduated to
Paradox series (EUIV, CK3, HOI4), which each have more verisimilitude and thus
feel more real and more satisfying.

Oppositely, Civ literally got more cartoony and, in a way, less believable
with each new version.

So now I only play Civ when I want a "casual" game. I'm never really
interested in playing it to completion. It feels "gamey" and mildly
unsatisfying once you've mostly explored the world. I have no interest in
playing at "hardest difficulties" that are really nothing more than giving
more plusses to the AI and more maluses to you.

I want more depth of play. To feel like Civ _used_ to feel. Exploring a world.
Making alliances that make sense.

I believe Paradox has spoiled me utterly in that way.

------
1f60c
I've never played it, but every other week, I get an email from Steam saying
it's on sale.

Is it worth it? Which version should I get?

~~~
cainxinth
If you like turn-based games, play it. It’s one of the best. Everyone says V
is the high water mark. I didn’t pick it up until VI, but really liked it.

~~~
thewileyone
I have all of them. I agree that V: Brave New World is the high water mark. I
play IV: Beyond The Sword on lower spec laptops that can't handle the graphics
in V.

------
lordnacho
A fair bit of my education was Civ. There's never enough time in a history
class to show you much of what's out there to learn, but Civ was a great way
to learn about some cultures I'd never have heard of otherwise. The
Civilopedia was pretty good reading for a time before Wikipedia, and it gave
you the basic list of what Sid thought were the important cultures. Of course
you can always add more, but Civ is a decent start if you want to know about
someone other than Greece, the Romans, and Egypt. The list of wonders is also
fantastic if you want something approaching a canon of stuff we've built.

I haven't dared to go back to the series in the later years, too much
addiction potential.

------
simonebrunozzi
I played all Civilization games from I to 4, and even played a little bit of
the 5.

Unfortunately, what was once a revolutionary concept, faded into something
more ordinary very quickly, at least for me.

Every game is essentially an improvement and refinement over the previous one,
with no "revolutionary" concepts being introduced. (an exception is Alpha
Centauri, which you can consider a spin-off in space, and which introduced
several interesting things).

It's a pity. I admire Sid Meyer and his work, and Firaxis. But it's a pity
that they essentially milked a successful concept without inventing anything
truly NEW for about twenty years.

------
KarimDaghari
Serious question: I haven't played Civ (due to my then, younger age, although
I have heard of it), I'd like to give it a go. Which one should I try out?
Why?

P.S: I would really appreciate one which favors/fosters learning over "dumb"
playing.

~~~
mcv
Civ 2 is the one I played the most. It's a classic, but probably a bit dated
by now. Civ 5 is pretty good, and probably better than 6. Some people claim it
peaked at Civ 4.

Civ 5 certainly changes a few things compared to earlier versions, but at its
heart it's still the same basic idea.

I think I'd recommend Civ 5. The lack of doom stacks makes it more tactical,
and it cuts down on micromanagement by introducing puppet governments for
excess cities. Every civilization has its own special units and special
abilities that give a subtle but noticeable twist to the flow of the game.

~~~
0xCMP
I would agree with this. Civ 4 is absolutely something some one new to the
games should experience. Civ 5 and 6 allow you to control and focus on
different things and are definitely, if not improvements, welcomed changes.

Humble Bundle has a lot of Civ sales so if you're patient I'm sure you can
grab a lot of the Civ games all at once for a small price.

------
vram22
Distantly related: Gandhi, asked by a reporter what he thought of
civilization, is said to have replied: "I think it would be a good idea".

~~~
toeget
And then he launched the nukes.

------
gdubs
I have fond memories of sitting in front of my Tandy Sensation, black screen
with two or three revealed pieces of a continent. Such a great game.

------
rkagerer
_...encounter neighbouring tribes with whom they’d negotiate, trade and
sometimes go to war._

Or, sometimes _not_ go to war

------
tus88
I haven't played any Civs yet, not sure to go with the original or one of the
remastered versions.

------
segfaultbuserr
I don't see _Civilization_ as a political masterpiece.

It's certainly a great strategy game, but its underlying political message is
a Machiavellian one. Unlike the real world where the governors and rulers are
(at least on a superficial level) bounded by international duties, social &
historical conditions, and the people under governance. In _Civilization_ ,
the player is free to adopt any economic policies or political systems, as
long as they give the maximum material benefits in the current situation. This
can lead to some absurd strategies that don't make much sense. For example,
abolishing republicanism in favor of absolute monarchy in the 21st century for
a few turns before jumping back, without any regards of real-world
consequences whatsoever, since the player is the eternal dictator of life.
It's a simplistic system designed for game balance, not a realistic analogy of
the real world.

Thus, while I think it's certainly one of the greatest strategy games, but I
don't think the game is a political masterpiece (Nevertheless, I guess the
political system in _Civilization_ can be alternatively interpreted as a
cautious tale similar to _Universal Paperclip_ 's warning - If you let an
overlord to optimize the wrong goal function - to produce as many paperclips
as possible, or to win the game at all costs, inevitably humanity will
suffer).

This Civilization mentality can be best summarized by this HN comment under
the submission "China’s Censors Ban Winnie the Pooh and the Letter ‘N’ After
Xi’s Power Grab".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493254)

> _If you played Civ5: no ideology is inherently wrong. As long as the "public
> opinion" is "content", people would be happy with it. Player would
> intentionally choose Order or Autocracy to gain some "Tenets". E.g. Order
> usually gets you better productivity and Autocracy usually gets you better
> military power._

> _Right now people in China are mostly content with the current ideology._

> _This design actually matches reality very well: while US apparently chose
> Freedom ideology, China chose Order ideology. China would finish impressive
> large project faster and more efficient, with the cost of dictatorship._

> _(Civ5 got a lot of these right, including a technology called "the Great
> Firewall" to counter the cultural influence from other civilizations
> [http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Firewall_(Civ5)](http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Firewall_\(Civ5\))
> ) _

And another HN user provided a counterargument on how analogy breaks down in
the real world,

> _It doesn 't match reality at all in fact. The exact opposite is true for
> nearly all cases (China being the sole exception)._

> _The major liberal economies are radically more productive than countries
> like China, much less the other 'order' type nations. The order economies,
> save partially for China (which is still extremely poor in the bottom 2/3),
> are on average impoverished, backwards, and with very low productivity. Even
> China is still shockingly backwards at a lot of common economic tasks, such
> as farming (they have ~1/40th the farming productivity of South Korea)._

> _The liberal economies have dozens of major success stories, from Germany to
> Canada to the US to Sweden. The 'order' group has one, and only insofar as
> China liberalized its economy and moved away from a rigid command & control
> economy._

> _Autocratic doesn 't get you a superior military. It typically gets you an
> economy that is bled and debased to feed the military, which ultimately is
> self-destroying. See: Russia, whose people are very poor ($8k GDP per
> capita; $4,000 median net worth). Meanwhile Putin diverts vast resources
> they can't afford at all, into military spending._

> _Liberal economies produce superior militaries pound for pound, because they
> can afford to sustain them over time._

------
AzzieElbab
indisputably, it kept me off the streets for months...

------
hn_check
Orthogonal complaint, but it was a huge loss when the Civilization catalog was
removed from GeForce Now.

I loved playing Civ while developing on my laptops, without it spooling up my
fans, burning my lap or impeding my other processes. Playing it in the cloud
was the perfect solution, and it has the perfect "lag doesn't matter" gameplay
where a bit of latency doesn't diminish the enjoyment.

Whatever their pissing match is, after playing Civ in the cloud I just could
never get back to playing it locally. I was spoiled, and as a result I haven't
bought two of the most recent Civ expansion packs.

------
dboreham
Expected this to be about: [https://www.amazon.com/Civilisation-Kenneth-
Clark/dp/0719568...](https://www.amazon.com/Civilisation-Kenneth-
Clark/dp/0719568447)

Or perhaps: [https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-West-Rest-Niall-
Ferguson...](https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-West-Rest-Niall-
Ferguson/dp/1594203059)

