
'Civilization' Creator Sid Meier: “I Didn't Really Expect to Be a Game Designer” - danso
http://www.glixel.com/interviews/civilization-creator-sid-meier-i-didnt-really-expect-to-be-a-game-designer-w480988
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fab1an
Oh man. Civ 1 was the first computer game my father purchased for my brother
and me in our earliest teens. We got to choose ONE game from a store, based
purely on its packaging, and obviously pending approval by our dad.

I vividly remember the magnetism of the pyramids depicted on the game's box -
it had to be that one. Little did we know that we accidentally purchased what
is probably the best game in computer game history.

Fast forward a year (and many hours of Civ) later in history class, when our
teacher asked the class (somewhat rhethorically..) whether anyone had an
explanation for why the Roman Empire became as successful as it was.

Before he could give us his explanation, I blurted out that it must have been
their invention of the aqueduct, which eventually allowed the roman cities to
grow as large as they did (which is, of course, the game mechanic of aqueducts
in Civ). Regardless of whether that's true or not, let's just say that this
wasn't the type of answer our teacher expected from a 6th grader!

As someone else noted in here, it's Paradox Interactive games that have
somewhat ruined all advanced Civs for me (the exception being Civ 1!). If
you're a grown up gamer looking for something to recreate that ol' Civ
feeling, give Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings a try.

~~~
Meegul
I can attest to your recommendation. Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings,
Hearts of Iron, Stellaris, and Victoria are their primary grand strategy
series these days. Each one of them specializes on a different time period,
either in the past or future. They all have a considerable amount of depth,
but after a few hours of playing around and accepting a few losses, they're a
great step up for people with experience with strategy games.

------
mattferderer
I've heard rumors that Sid Meier is a foreign entity from some other universe.
He sucks time away from your life & uses it to help him live forever.

If you don't believe me & you need proof (since this is Hacker News) I dare
you to play any Civilization game from the series. I suggest Civ 3. Whichever
you pick, you will find yourself randomly noticing the people around you are
waking up for breakfast & you've been playing all night. You'll be upset with
yourself for a minute, but then you'll realize you just need to make a couple
more strategic moves to conqueror your neighbor. If you call in sick today,
you might be able to take over your entire continent. Then again, now that
you've got the hang of it, you could also restart & really perfect your
opening moves. Dilemmas..

~~~
mojowo11
Currently at 504 hours on Civ V and I don't really even think I'm very good at
it. It really eats my brain anytime I play it.

------
chongli
I remember playing Civ 1 back in the day. It was a great game, albeit easy to
win with rapid-expansion strategies. Civ 2 was probably my favourite of the
_Civilization_ series (Alpha Centauri being my favourite overall).

As time went on, the designers worked harder and harder to block the best
strategies in the game rules. They added more and more convoluted systems of
upkeep, corruption, etc. in order to slow down a rapid expanding player. This
has probably been my biggest beef with the series: redesigning the rules to
counteract the player instead of making the AI opponents smarter. I haven't
played Civ 6 but Civ 5 just bored me to tears with how much of that nonsense
they did. That game felt like you had a million decisions to make and none of
them had much consequence.

~~~
scrollaway
6 is a decent rethink of the core rules and mechanics, that still doesn't
stray _too_ far from 5. I would recommend taking a look at it on youtube at
the very least, it's definitely the better recent title.

Civ is one of the very rare strategy multiplayer games where AI mode is a lot
of fun; different than PvP, but still a challenge and a mostly fresh
experience. My main issue with it is the exceedingly annoying political
behaviour of the ever-complaining AIs. (You're expanding too much! You're not
expanding enough! Your army is too large! Your army is weak! One of your units
stared at me wrong!)

~~~
ryandrake
I also find it a good thing that they try, with subsequent versions, to
balance out the play so that you can't just use one strategy and win all the
time. Anyone who remembers Nod Bikes knows how little fun that ends up being.
Also [1]

The thing that's always been a bummer about Civ's single-player-vs-AI games is
that, like most games, the difficulty level simply controlled the amount of
handicapping rather than made the AI smarter or more cunning. The difference
between hard and easy mode was that they'd just give the player more money,
stronger units, better bonuses, etc.

1: I just searched Google for Zerg Rush and holy moly that is awesome. Great
job whichever Googler thought of that.

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BurritoAlPastor
Of particular note to the HN crowd – the "typical" design process for a Meier
game is he shows up at the office with a completely playable game prototype,
and if people find it fun, then the whole thing gets reimplemented. Apparently
he's been using the same engine for prototyping for some 20 years.

[http://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-vi/sid-meier-
civ-6](http://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-vi/sid-meier-civ-6)

~~~
graphitezepp
That is actually really cool. I bet this strategy is super efficient for game
design, you know for designers who do the work to maintain a custom game
engine that can do everything they need.

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wcarss
If you want to listen to ~7 hours of Sid Meier being interviewed about
Pirates, Railroad Tycoon, Civ, the move from Microprose to Firaxis, and more,
these podcasts[1] are awesome. They're done by Soren Johnson, creator of
Offworld Trading Company and lead designer of Civ IV.

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

------
Mendenhall
I miss MicroProse and those fat game manuals! Looking inside for code words so
you could land in Gunship...good times.

Edit-Airborne ranger was well ahead of its time IMO. Think that was first game
I really felt like I was "sneaking".

~~~
sundvor
Airborne Ranger - that's a title I haven't heard in a LONG while. I must have
lost weeks to it though. :)

In fact they have so many good ones.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MicroProse_games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MicroProse_games)

Falcon 4 is still alive today!

~~~
acemarke
Oh, man... I'd totally forgotten about that game! I played it a _ton_ as a kid
:) Now that you mention it, the sights and sounds are coming back to my mind's
eye.

Aaaand now I know what I'm doing with my free time later this week :)

~~~
sundvor
Mmmm. I vaguely remember what it was like to have free time. :)

If I can find some again, I do want to get F4 BMS up and running with TrackIr
on the 34".

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Shivetya
I know everyone goes on and on about Civilization but all the simulators from
F15/Gunship/etc were my first introduction to his games. I still think Pirates
was the real breakthrough. It was an almost sand box game and of course
Railroad Tycoon.

Oddly its perhaps my playing of traditional board games usually with others
that kept Civilization from taking over my computer gaming at the time

~~~
animal531
Pirates was a fun little game. Another one that I loved growing up was Covert
Action.

Only the electronics and breaking in mini-games were really any good, but the
game was set up so that you could focus on those and pretty much ignore the
others. I loved the whole mystery and trying to untangle the crime aspect with
the different actors, as well as how if you took too long or looked in the
wrong places you could miss capturing some of the bad guys, or even screw up
the whole mission.

------
Terr_
It's interesting to see how many classic/nostalgia-games were actually
simulations and sandboxes, rather than scripted experiences.

~~~
danso
20 years from now, how will our current gaming scene be defined in the
compressed, excerpted view of retrospective history? Sure, there are scripted
megahits such as "The Last of Us" and the "Call of Duty" series. But the
standouts in terms of pure revenue and popularity metrics would seemingly be
the Grand Theft Auto series (particularly V) and, for indies, Minecraft (pre-
Microsoft).

~~~
rhcom2
I think of the current scene dominated by a lower barrier of entry to market
and the current rise of indie and "early access" games so maybe it won't be
defined by games at all but by the dominance of Steam.

~~~
flukus
The 80's had an even lower barrier to entry, but now we tend to only remember
the best that was on offer.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not really, if you count "access to a computer" and "access to distribution
channels" in those barriers.

------
PakG1
Anytime Civ 2 is mentioned, I just remember this. Just so amazing.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4100032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4100032)

~~~
drrob
My thoughts exactly; I can remember reading that the first time around on
HN/Reddit.

------
fsiefken
CIV before pixel graphics, Empire:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Empire)

* VMS Empire: [http://www.catb.org/esr/vms-empire/](http://www.catb.org/esr/vms-empire/) (apt-get install empire, ascii graphics)

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

* XConq [https://sourceware.org/xconq/](https://sourceware.org/xconq/)

* A relatively more modern commercial variant (including mobile) [http://killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/ednew/](http://killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/ednew/) [http://killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/edme](http://killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/edme)

~~~
fsiefken
Another fun fact, XConq has a lisp like game design language (GDL) built in.
[https://sourceware.org/xconq/manual/xcdesign_toc.html](https://sourceware.org/xconq/manual/xcdesign_toc.html)

------
sleepybrett
Nice interview, much longer more in depth one on Soren Johnson's 'Designer
Notes' podcast (the fourth part just landed the other day).
[https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/](https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/)

------
manuelflara
I never got to play Civ 1 but Civ 2 was one of the first games I ever owned
and played endlessly. Its soundtrack still brings back those feelings..
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C55Ae3apn5s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C55Ae3apn5s)

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WalterBright
I've been told by various people that _Civilization_ was inspired by _Empire_
(the first computer god game as far as I know), but I'd like to ask Sid if
that is true!

(There's also the older _Hammurabi_ game, but that one has no map.)

------
TuringNYC
Civ 1 was the closest thing i've ever experienced to addiction, withdrawal and
denial and it was frightening. Yet so memorable.

------
elymar
"The first Civilization was released more than a quarter-century ago in 1991"
...Thanks for making me feel old.

------
gjjrfcbugxbhf
What are civ players thoughts on freeciv?

~~~
fsiefken
Compared to Civ1/2 it has nicer graphics tilesets. Sometimes I play (I am more
into board games like Eclipse en Scythe) and then I use the 2D tileset and a
tiny universe for quick play. For other open source civs - but much more retro
- you might like VMS Empire, Classic Empire or XConq. Less is sometimes more.

[http://www.catb.org/esr/vms-empire/](http://www.catb.org/esr/vms-empire/)

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

[http://sourceware.org/xconq/README](http://sourceware.org/xconq/README)

------
mvindahl
I played a ridiculous amount of Civ1 back in the day, and later Civ2 and Civ3.
I deleted Civ3 around 2003 because I felt that it was sucking too much time
away from my real life. Haven't played any of the more recent versions but I'm
sure that they're great.

Instead, a few years back, I took up the occasional Civ1 again, downloaded as
abandonware, and running in a DOSBox. A nice thing about Civ1 is that I can
usually complete it in a few hours; as I recall, Civ3 could easily take a
night to play through. I even played it with my son for a while. I think that
he should know the classics.

As for strategy, I play with three civs, I always prioritize research over
taxes, and I prioritize expansion over fortification early in the game (I quit
when this backfires).

Once I get my civ rolling I have found the best strategy for getting a high
score is to track down the other civs as fast as possible and to knock them
out, starting at the capital. Once their capital has fallen and a few main
cities, they will make peace. Then rest of the cities can be conquered at my
leisure or they can be cheaply bought by diplomats and their building sold for
scraps, decreasing the price further. An important prerequisite for the
aggressive strategy to work is to get to them before they build city walls.

Often, however, I find myself gravitating towards a "tech hub" strategy
instead. It rarely leads to scores above 100% on king level but if feels kind
of satisfying. The point of this is to appoint some city with potential for
trade and growth (ideally all of its accessible squares should be plains or
convertible to plains). Then build, as soon as possible, the Colossus (+1
trade per trade square). Then, in some order, a library (+50% science), a
granary (faster growth), Copernicus' Observatory (+100% science), university
(+50% science), and Shakespeare's Theatre (everyone is happy). Bring in
caravans from the rest of the continent to speed up production, and to set up
trade routes from the tech hub. Elsewhere, build the Pyramids (switch to
democracy) and J.S.Bach's Cathedral (two happy faces per city and only way to
keep democracy while dispatching a sail or a frigate with caravans from the
tech hub). Research railroad and, once achived, assign all settlers to put
railroads on the area surrounding the tech hub, boosting growth (in
preparation for railroad, clear any forests and swamps, and build roads and
irrigation). Postpone researching electricity since it will cancel the
Colossus.

With the tech hub strategy, the science light bulps of the tech hub will often
overflow into the next panel on the city details screen and I'll usually have
armors and planes and railroads before reaching 0 AD. After that, I guess the
correct path is to switch to communism and eradicate all resistance. I tend to
do this too late, though.

------
RogtamBar
It's been 27 fucking years since 1990, and the civilization franchise is still
a glorified boardgame, where the only agency is had by each player.

Totally unlike the real world, where ruling or governing is more about
figuring out how to exercise power without getting overthrown.

Such a game would be way more interesting.

~~~
jon-wood
I think that's fine, if you want lots of intricacy in diplomacy Paradox have
that covered. Civilization is very much a board game - in general Firaxis seem
to have gone down the road of making incredibly polished boardgames that you
can play on your own with a computer, and I think it's worked out really well.

~~~
RogtamBar
>polished boardgames that you can play on your own with a computer, and I
think it's worked out really well.

Paradox is also in the business of making boardgames, albeit with way more
elaborate rules.

> your own with a computer, and I think it's worked out really well.

I don't think it has. The AI in Civ series is just bad, and only gets by
through rampant cheating. Civ V was out for years, and they haven't managed to
do anything decent with the combat AI. Nor prevent the AI from doing stupid
things.

