Video: Ars talks Civilization with the man himself: Sid Meier

This "War Stories" video explores how <em>Civilization</em> almost wasn't a turn-based game.

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[ChrisSD]

I lost many, many hours to Civ 1 as a boy. It was a rarity in the battle with my parents over seat time as they saw it as educational. Ha!

I've tried to get even remotely as engaged with the new versions but i just can't seem to bridge the gap. In the quest to make them more detailed an deeper/broader they've lost the fun for me. I'd love to see the original game-play, 100% intact and true to the original but in the modern engine for the visual treat. Dare to dream.

I think the second game was an improvement in gameplay over the first. IMHO games 1, 3 and 5 changed up the gameplay whereas 2, 4 and 6 refined the previous games. So if I had to choose one to have a "HD" upgrade, it'd be 2.

But of course this misses out Alpha Centuri which is a classic in its own right. I'd really like a modern take on that (no, Beyond Earth doesn't count).

 

[ChrisSD]

I think the second game was an improvement in gameplay over the first. IMHO games 1, 3 and 5 changed up the gameplay whereas 2, 4 and 6 refined the previous games. So if I had to choose one to have a "HD" upgrade, it'd be 2.

The funny thing about this meme is that this is almost the opposite of how they were developed. Civ II was written by Brian Reynolds in England, initially without access to the Civ II source, and even after he got it, he didn’t copy any code. Civ III, meanwhile, was based on SMAC, a game that was very similar to Civ II in its basic mechanics. Civ IV is the one big ground-up rewrite, which then formed the basis for Civ V and VI.

(Source: Designer Notes podcast, where Soren Johnson interviews other developers, including Sid Meier and Reynolds)

BTW, I disagree with the characterization of Civ IV as a polish. It is a much more fundamental reimagining than the iterative Civ III, which really only added strategic resources and great people to the formula.

Yeah, I guess 3 to 4 is a slight stretch to fit the pattern. It can be argued that it was the expansions to 4 that really changed up gameplay but the base game did feel different to 3 (it felt much slower IIRC).

As to the design notes, I would draw a distinction between game mechanics and game code but the way they were developed is interesting.