The History of Civilization

You may recall back in March, when a group of smart folks got together to form a game canon. They essentially nominated the ten most important games, ever. Gamasutra has begun a series of articles which will explore the storied history of each of these titles, and they've started with Sim Meier's Civilization series. Benj Edwards' history of Civilization begins with a rundown on the series itself, and wraps with a lengthy Sid Meier interview. Required reading, essentially. "Meier [is] comfortable with a legacy inextricably tied to Civilization: 'I think that if that's what's on my epitaph, "Did Civilization," that would be fine.' In musing about the fate of his beloved series, Meier finds himself satisfied with what the future might hold for the franchise: 'There's probably somebody getting ready for their first day of college that's probably going to be a part of Civilization in ten to fifteen years from now. I think it'll be around for quite a while.'"

Ultimate Civilization

[Yold]

I can't wait until you can build and empire over 2000 years, and then walk through the streets ala GTA3. Maybe steals some cars and hit some pedestrians too, it would probably be straight if you didn' build the courthouse improvement.

Re:Ultimate Civilization

[spun]

You know, I've given some thought to a game like that. You know the 'great people' of Civ IV? What if, to gain the benefits of a great person, you had to play that person and complete a short RPG style quest in the civilization you've created? Like the 'Rush Hour' expansion to Sim City 4, where you can gain cash, popularity, and other benefits from completing driving missions.

I always wanted to see more nonmilitary victories

[jollyreaper]

My computer isn't up to the task of playing Civ4 but I see from the strategy guides that more attention was given to peaceful expansion and influence. The problem I always run into with these 4x games is that you have to claim a lot of territory early but it's tough to strike the balance between research, industry, and army. I'd always end up buttoned up in my cities/solar systems/castles until I had an economy together, constantly fearing attack by strong enemy forces, then by the time my fleet/army is ready to kick ass, the enemies have collapsed. Anyone else remember Master of Orion with the massive fleets of 32,000 weak-ass ships constantly attacking your planets and fleeing before the mass of defense missiles?

So, for people who have played a lot of IV, how are the non-military victories? Are they better than just building spaceships?

Re:Ultimate Civilization

[HoboCop]

I really like this sort of idea, but taken a bit further out. A game like civ, that creates content, for another game, like WOW or another MMORPG/RPG/ or even FPS. With the right kind of infrastructure and reporting / management tools. It's a neverending cycle of content and players that can evolve together. I think some games are drifting towards this, but I don't think anyone has seen the really big picture yet. Couple this with some good competition, prizes, and a serious rendering engine, and you have a reality-based TV show on top of it. It's all technically possible today, there just needs to be a visionary to put it all together in a way that pleases the masses, and caters to different groups of people with different wants. You get something for the hardcore gamer, something for the creative (and/or technical) gamer, and something for the casuals too.

Re:I always wanted to see more nonmilitary victori

[EMeta]

In Civ IV, you can win via Space, Diplomatically, or Culturally. Space is by far the easiest (and the easiest for the computer if you let them). The cultural victory is hard, but doable. The corruption rates are scaled very well in that a few cities can easily have the same or better technology learning rate as a similar Civ with lots of cities. If you keep ahead of the Tech curve & get most of the cultural wonders, you can win with 3 uber cities. The opponents are rather aggressive on higher levels, but culture enhances your defense, and computer opponents lose their aggression if you keep giving them techs & money (Which you can get by selling techs to others). You might need the right leader to pull it off on any significantly hard difficulty (I'm thinking Industrious + Philosophical would be best).

You can also take other cities via culture, and much more reliably than in III. So yeah, get a new graphics card & play. It's worth it.

Re:Just one question Mr Meier...

[SEE]

Why is fixing this such an issue in all of these historical RTS or strategy games?

It's an inherently difficult problem to scale things so near-tech-level rivals have approximately correct interactions while zeroing the chance against far-tech-level opponents. You need lots of special-case rules to handle interactions; numerical "unit strength" values and formulas don't work. Call it the "Hot Lead" problem, because it was bedeviling Steve Jackson long before any of these computer games came along.

Re:Just one question Mr Meier...

[a_ghostwheel]

For those of us who old enough to remember Galaxy e-mail based game (and other variants like VGA Planets and Galaxy Plus): when ship had offence 4 times opponent defense it meant automatic kill (and when defender had defense 4 times greater than opponent offense attack did absolutely nothing). And this was long before even Civ 1.

I am not sure why such logic was not included into Civ. Personally, I am going with "catastrophic failure" explanation given by somebody above.