The History of Civilization 106
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.'"
The History of Civilization (Score:5, Funny)
"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move."
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The ver excellent Civilization strategy guide "Civilization, or Rome on 640K per day" or something to that effect, had a section on modding the game.
One of the mods was editing the text that was part of the opening cinematic, and the example the guy used was, in part that very sequence, as well as the digital watches bit.
Just The History of Civilization I (Score:2, Informative)
Then there's the entire segment of history regarding CivNet, the user community generated effort driven by the fact there would be no Civ II originally. Or the fact that CivNet's efforts were wrapped in
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In Civ 1, we replaced its original creation text ("the earth was without form and void" etc) with quotes from Douglas Adams. Worked very well.
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Just one question Mr Meier... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Just one question Mr Meier... (Score:5, Funny)
That's easy, hundreds of them getting squashed gum up the treads immobilizing the tank. From there hundreds more take turns sticking their spears down the barrel of the turret causing the tank crew to expend all their ammo unclogging the main gun. Then its only a small matter of blocking the air vents of the tank with zebra skins and elephant dung and waiting for the crew to asphyxiate.
Re:Just one question Mr Meier... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just one question Mr Meier... (Score:5, Funny)
Two words: Cheerleader pyramid.
Re:Just one question Mr Meier... (Score:5, Funny)
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OK here goes. It's not a matter of the spearman actually shooting down the stealth bomber. Rather the stealth bomber 'rolls a 1' to put it in RPG context. He fumbles. Catastrophic engine failure, the bomb fail to explode, or they explode in while still in the bay, etc. The spearman doesn't take down the plane, the plane just utterly fails.
Sorry, I can't have a cute/funny explanation all the time. I tried to come up with one but I'
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Besides, that's what you get for not softening them up with artillery first.
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Unfortunately, this isn't just a problem in Civ. I was playing Rise of Nations the other day, and had a very similar experience. I watched in awe as an archer sunk a missile cruiser that was sitting just off shore. Why is fixing this such an issue in all of these historical RTS or strategy games?
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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.
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World of Warcraft has an extremely effective way of dealing with a similar problem.
If you are significantly lower level than an opponent there is no way at all that any number of you will do any damage at all to an opponent. When the level difference is in the tens its pretty well impossible to harm them.
In the case of the spearmen t
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I am not sure why such logic was not included into Civ. Personally, I am going with "catastrophic failure" explanation given by somebody above.
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Damn you, Sid! (Score:5, Funny)
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Shouldn't smart people know what a "canon" is? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't smart people know what a "canon" is? (Or is "smart folks" a knock on their intelligence to begin with?)
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=of
(In other words, 10 specific games cannot be a "canon", unless you are saying that these games are a "bible" and all other games are heresy. 10 specific game design principles, however...)
Words mean whatever I want them to mean. (Score:2, Insightful)
Considering how religious people have been claiming their own definitions for well-established words these past few decades...
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Religion redefines words. 'Marriage' for example. (Score:2)
Marriage...? (Score:2)
The word 'marriage' has been around since the 12th century AD or so. It was developed within the Church, and has since then up until recently meant the union of a man and woman. It's only in the recent decades that people have tried to instill the word 'marriage' with ambiguity.
The idea of all sorts of partnerships, life arrangements and what have you has been around since a social stratum
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Dripping with incorrectness and obnoxiousness, the Anonymous Fucktard is sure to bring you a laugh, or at least a derisive snort.
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The Answer (Score:2)
First, film or literary canons are specific to a particular author/artist, genre, era, geographic region, etc.
Second, film or literary canons do not arbitrarily limit themselves to "10 items"; they instead include as many as are required to provide a well-rounded assortment of high-quality examples of the film or literature of the particular author/artist, genre, era, geographic region, etc.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_canon [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps next time you'll educate yourself (or at least read your own link) before denigrating others!
The Answer (Score:2)
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I think 10 is an arbitrary number but you need to be arbitrary in deciding such a cut off so it's a good start, pretty soon other people will bring up games of a similar quality which they think should be included, some will be included other's won't.
That's the purpose, to establish a baseline level of quality for "excellent", "provocative" and "insightful" games.
Th
Mod parent down, mod siblings up (Score:2)
Smart people know "canon" has more meanings than the one you know about.
I generally don't like people complaining about weird modding on slashdot, but this time the ignorant post got modded up to +5 insightful, and the insightful/informative posts didn't get modded up at all. Read this message's siblings for more details.
The real Sid Meier? (Score:5, Funny)
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Ultimate Civilization (Score:2, Interesting)
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http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc
Basically Breach series was tactical combat like UFO/X-Com or Laser Squad, and Rules of Engagement was tactical space combat - two completely independent games.
Well, install'em both and you get the boarding party sequences (capturing starships) from RoE to play through in Breach.
I do wish this was used more often elsewhere, definitely.
Re:Ultimate Civilization (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, that would certainly fix my number one complaint about Civilization: it's not time-consuming enough.
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Just, you know, doing my part to combat overpopulation.
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Interesting.
Personally, I would hate this. Civilization is (to my mind) a strategy game with a large-scale strategic focus and, furthermore, an open-ended strategy. That is, there are almost no "wrong moves." But quests are closed-ended with fixed goals, which completely reverses the Civ paradigm. I don't think they would mix well.
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In a Civ style game it doesn't make as much sense, even if the quests are minor and optional. I see it as som
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I guess the difference is also that your concept of quests introduces a sense of randomness into the game that currently doesn't exist (much). When building a wonder, I know how long it's going to take. I know that if I shift one of my citizens from working that irrigated grassland square to that mined hills square, I'm going to finish the wonder exactly N turns faster (modulo events later in the game). I can balance the short-term goal of finishing the wonder against the longer-term goal of expanding the p
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Yesterday, I declared war on the Romans while understimating their military... trust me, there are "wrong moves".
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Ghandi the warmonger? (Score:5, Insightful)
It always seemed strange to see that kind old man on your screen and to know that you had a huge long protracted war ahead of you.
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Cheers!
I always wanted to see more nonmilitary victories (Score:4, Interesting)
So, for people who have played a lot of IV, how are the non-military victories? Are they better than just building spaceships?
Re:I always wanted to see more nonmilitary victori (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I think it was Civ III where, after my civ started getting really powerful, all the other civs would eventually switch to fundamentalism and declare war on me. Naturally I felt I had to crush them by switching my massive industrial capacity to wartime production. I was relieved when Civ IV fixed the problem so that other civs behaved a little more reasonably. Honest, I don't LIKE nuking continents.
Funny you should mention that. These games really allow for some broad mental role-playing, you get out of it as much as you put your imagination into it. I was playing the first Master of Orion and had a good alliance with the bird people, we were tight. Now sure, I know it was just a random roll of the random number generator but the bird people went and broke the alliance, attacked one of my planets, betrayed me. So I systematically crushed their empire to dust. Their emperor kept getting on the line, b
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Yeah, the modern super realistic stuff is fairly easy to understand. But the way the best of the old games could suck you in and make you care about a handful of pixels.... the evil Ur-Quan blowing away my little Arilou skiff and the Shofixti making the ultimate sacrifice. Or (was it Independence War II) where you're with the remains of the fleet facing the advancing infected ships and the only option is to blow the jump gate isolating yourself and the other survivors forever from the doomed Earth.
Star Control II! Yeah, hands down one of the greatest games I've ever played. The designers said they wrote the equivalent of a full-length scifi novel with all the dialog and descriptions. They weren't joking. And the in-jokes, oy. I remember how happy the Syreen were when you found their Penetrators. And fucking with the Illwrathi religion... not to mention their ships looked like the Rebel Alliance logo. And the Vux! "Sorry, we just can't stand the sight of you." Such fun. And I remember the shock of th
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Hm... I don't remember my copy of Ringworld coming with the book. The printed material in quite a few of them would be bigger than the boxes games come in these days though.
It may have been a game of the year edition or something. All I remember is a friend got the game for christmas, didn't care for it, and gave me the book. It's in my book collection somewhere. If you remember the way game boxes were back then, they were like 90% air by volume. I think they did that just to make the games more noticeable on the shelves. These days, game boxes are tiny in comparison! I remember when they started doing the "value games" by reissuing semi-old games in jewel cases. "Where's the
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But yeah, somewhere along the line that all changed and the big boxes contained a CD and some coupons or other advertising.
Re:I always wanted to see more nonmilitary victori (Score:2)
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I find the diplomatic victory to be occasionally frustrating. Build the UN, get elected permanent Secretary General by being extra nice to everyone. The point of the game is playing, not winning though. I find it to me much more rewarding to forget about victory altogether and focus on experimenting with the game mechanics or toying with the AI. Meticulously micromanaging every city can make a few turns last all evening. It is worth the upgrade and purchase. I would also like to point out that there are official expansions and many fine mods.
Looks like I need to upgrade the graphics card and start playing.
The best victory I've ever heard of from any 4x game was in a game I don't even know the name of. It was a space game. The way planetary conquest worked, you had to occupy the planet for an amount of time to reduce resistance. Once it was at zero, you were in control. The guy relating the story said he had his last planet taken over by another computer player. He thought the game was over but he kept getting the turn button. He looked at the
Ramble on Civ (Score:2)
The vanilla game is great, having drawn on experience from the prior incarnations and tapped hardware for complexity they really kicked the crap out of a release version. The Warlords expansion throws s
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Re:I always wanted to see more nonmilitary victori (Score:2)
A full blown military victory (world conquest) is actually pretty difficult in a normal speed game in IV, IMO. Depending on teh size of the map and the number of civs. Playing Epic or Marathon speeds make it easier, if only because you have more time to move units around... even if you're not technically producing them faster. Spaceship victory often becomes the "default" win for
Call to Power! (Score:2)
That game gives (gave) all kinds of ways of winning.
My favorite was the lawyers/corporate branch/advertising campaigns method followed up by ecoterrorism. Lawyers can stop production in enemy cities, corporate branches can sap productivity into your own economy and advertising can make their populations very unhappy. Theres no real need to resort to anything so primitive as open hostilities. Unless you *want* to
Theres a unit in the game which can convert surrounding developed squares back
Page 1 of 10! (Score:1)
Do you really thing we all have ADD? I'm not going to click through 10 pages when it could be one page. Even magazines and newspaper articles give you something to bite on before they say continues on Page ***. Christ, I know you web people want to make money o
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Can't I just read the whole goddamn article? Put ads in both columns on either side all the way down, I don't care. That would be better then reading what amounts to four paragraphs with two screenshots and an ad to justify creating another page.
Do you really thing we all have ADD? I'm not going to click through 10 pages when it could be one page. Even magazines and newspaper articles give you something to bite on before they say continues on Page ***. Christ, I know you web people want to make money off of ads, but please knock it off with this crap.
Search for the word "print" and you will find the "Printer Friendly Version" link. Click on this and you will have all ten pages in one long html file.
Better line for his epitaph... (Score:2)
'Created Civilization'
or
'Creater of all Civilizations (or at least the first two)'
I would have put Rogue on the list. (Score:2)