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.

Read the whole story

 

[mpat]

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.

I disagree with calling Civ III iterative. It did much more than add strategic resources and great people. Diplomatic victory, cultural victory (heck culture period), borders, national wonders (called small wonders in Civ III) all debuted with Civ III.

Borders are from SMAC. Diplomatic victory is from SMAC. Culture I suppose is new, but the same loyalty mechanism existed before - all they did was make it obvious and tie a new victory condition to it. National wonders? Wow, impressive game-changing idea. No, Civ III is not particularly new. It uses the SMAC engine with dumbed-down combat and a historical skin. There is a reason that game didn't sell.

Civ III sold more copies in its first two months than SMAC did in its first year. Also culture is a huge part of Civ from III on, and that's true no matter how good Alpha Centauri and Civ IV are.

Civ III almost certainly sold less than every other mainline Civ game (the possible exception is Civ I, which was very close to Civ III in any case). It sold less than half of what Civ II sold, and while exact sales of Civ IV are a little bit tricky to figure out, they appear to have been more than 4 times Civ III. I know SMAC didn't sell, but it didn't have the Civilization brand and it didn't have the Microprose brand. It had a brand new studio and a publisher that was already hated - no wonder it didn't sell.

And sure culture became an important thing eventually, but it wasn't a radical change when it was introduced. There was a hidden culture value already in the first game - all they did was make it visible and tie border expansion to it. Since absolutely no code from Civ III lived on in any future game (according to Civ IV developer Soren Johnson), it's influence was very limited.

 

[Hypnostene]

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.

I disagree with calling Civ III iterative. It did much more than add strategic resources and great people. Diplomatic victory, cultural victory (heck culture period), borders, national wonders (called small wonders in Civ III) all debuted with Civ III.

Borders are from SMAC. Diplomatic victory is from SMAC. Culture I suppose is new, but the same loyalty mechanism existed before - all they did was make it obvious and tie a new victory condition to it. National wonders? Wow, impressive game-changing idea. No, Civ III is not particularly new. It uses the SMAC engine with dumbed-down combat and a historical skin. There is a reason that game didn't sell.

Civ III sold more copies in its first two months than SMAC did in its first year. Also culture is a huge part of Civ from III on, and that's true no matter how good Alpha Centauri and Civ IV are.

Civ III almost certainly sold less than every other mainline Civ game (the possible exception is Civ I, which was very close to Civ III in any case). It sold less than half of what Civ II sold, and while exact sales of Civ IV are a little bit tricky to figure out, they appear to have been more than 4 times Civ III. I know SMAC didn't sell, but it didn't have the Civilization brand and it didn't have the Microprose brand. It had a brand new studio and a publisher that was already hated - no wonder it didn't sell.

And sure culture became an important thing eventually, but it wasn't a radical change when it was introduced. There was a hidden culture value already in the first game - all they did was make it visible and tie border expansion to it. Since absolutely no code from Civ III lived on in any future game (according to Civ IV developer Soren Johnson), it's influence was very limited.

While I generally agree with your argument, and consider Civ III the worst of the series, and a serious letdown after SMAC, one change it did introduce was quite good: strategic resources. They made gameplay in future games quite interesting (hunting for copper in early Civ 4, for instance).

 

[mpat]

While I generally agree with your argument, and consider Civ III the worst of the series, and a serious letdown after SMAC, one change it did introduce was quite good: strategic resources. They made gameplay in future games quite interesting (hunting for copper in early Civ 4, for instance).

Strategic resources and Great People are the two good things that Civ III added to the formula. My main point that started this thread was that that was pretty much it (note: the forum software forced me to trim quotes, so you can't just expand it above, but you can see it in the thread above), so to call I, III, V the big changes and II, IV and VI iterative is dishonest. Even if we add culture to the formula, III is a very careful polish of existing code. It doesn't remove anything fundamental to the game, unlike every later game that pulled at least something.

There is a drive in the Civ community to try to make the entire development seem cyclical, as if it were yearly iPhone releases or something, and that just isn't true. This is just one example, but people also have tried to argue that every civ game was unusable at launch and required several expansions to be playable, that the community always kept playing the old version for long after the new was released, or that they were always slow with never-ending turn times. None of this was true before V, but to try to show a trend, people try to make Civ III into something it wasn't. For all that I don't like Civ III all that much, it ran well from the start, the patches were balance-related rather than stability/performance, and the expansions barely touched the core gameplay (they added multiplayer, various scenarios and more cookie-cutter civilizations to play as). This is the exact opposite of how Civ V was.

 

[Hypnostene]

While I generally agree with your argument, and consider Civ III the worst of the series, and a serious letdown after SMAC, one change it did introduce was quite good: strategic resources. They made gameplay in future games quite interesting (hunting for copper in early Civ 4, for instance).

Strategic resources and Great People are the two good things that Civ III added to the formula. My main point that started this thread was that that was pretty much it (note: the forum software forced me to trim quotes, so you can't just expand it above, but you can see it in the thread above), so to call I, III, V the big changes and II, IV and VI iterative is dishonest. Even if we add culture to the formula, III is a very careful polish of existing code. It doesn't remove anything fundamental to the game, unlike every later game that pulled at least something.

There is a drive in the Civ community to try to make the entire development seem cyclical, as if it were yearly iPhone releases or something, and that just isn't true. This is just one example, but people also have tried to argue that every civ game was unusable at launch and required several expansions to be playable, that the community always kept playing the old version for long after the new was released, or that they were always slow with never-ending turn times. None of this was true before V, but to try to show a trend, people try to make Civ III into something it wasn't. For all that I don't like Civ III all that much, it ran well from the start, the patches were balance-related rather than stability/performance, and the expansions barely touched the core gameplay (they added multiplayer, various scenarios and more cookie-cutter civilizations to play as). This is the exact opposite of how Civ V was.

Agreed, I've seen this drive as well, including both what you said about Civ 3, and arguments that Civ 4 was unplayable before Beyond the Sword.

Besides the point: ironically, none of the later changes to Civ 5 seemed to address the games' core issues (as elaborated on by Sulla in his "What Went Wrong with Civ5?").

 

[Snazster]

Great as Civilization was, Sid's Alpha Centauri was better by far. I still play it every other month or so.

But where, oh where, is the reboot? Don't tell me it was Civilization: Beyond because it most emphatically was NOT!

It’s in copyright hell.

It was published by EA, who retains the rights, but lacks the studio (or interest) to make a new one. Firaxis (now owned by 2K) has the skills, but no rights, and no Brian Reynolds who wrote all the lore. Reynolds himself apparently doesn’t like the game that much (which absolutely broke my heart to hear) and isn’t interested in 4Xes anyway anymore. He did leave the window open to making some other game in the same universe that wasn’t a 4X, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in that either.

Firaxis did the only thing they could - Beyond Earth. For all that it was nowhere near the original, the expansion made it a quite enjoyable game. Worth another try if you haven’t played it since that came out. It isn’t SMAC, however.

Thanks for that. These sorts of things seem to happen far too often to the things I really, really like.

 

[maxp0wer]

For me, this game is the GOAT. Really enjoyed seeing the original version in the video; brought back a lot of fond memories of playing that version with my brother when we were young.
Thanks to Sid and the other devs for making this game!

 

[Scipio Africanus]

The last part of the video was goosebump inducing when he starts up the old 386. My brain was yelling "hey i had that same ViewSonic 15!"

 

[Deleted member 543677]

Great as Civilization was, Sid's Alpha Centauri was better by far. I still play it every other month or so.

But where, oh where, is the reboot? Don't tell me it was Civilization: Beyond because it most emphatically was NOT!

It’s in copyright hell.

It was published by EA, who retains the rights, but lacks the studio (or interest) to make a new one. Firaxis (now owned by 2K) has the skills, but no rights, and no Brian Reynolds who wrote all the lore. Reynolds himself apparently doesn’t like the game that much (which absolutely broke my heart to hear) and isn’t interested in 4Xes anyway anymore. He did leave the window open to making some other game in the same universe that wasn’t a 4X, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in that either.

Firaxis did the only thing they could - Beyond Earth. For all that it was nowhere near the original, the expansion made it a quite enjoyable game. Worth another try if you haven’t played it since that came out. It isn’t SMAC, however.

I played Beyond Earth twice, and was so very disappointed. I did not, however, realize there was an expansion that improved the game. I think I will have to give it another whirl... right after I get tired of Satisfactory.

I mostly played BE with the expansions and achievements hunting required me to play without the expansion. The difference was jarring.

The expansion gets a bunch of new unique mechanics that aren’t Civ V re-skinned. All the implications of moving floating cities, a much better pace with picking up affinity plus the fact that affinity from your non major affinity usually get useful at some point.

I do confess that you generally finish upgrading your units to the last tier a bit fast, and that it would have been nice to extend the tree a bit further, similarly it is possible to reach the maximum affinity and further affinity points then get wasted. (Unlike What future tech used to be in Civ IV at least). Also naval warfare is just over powered in my opinion.

 

[johnt007871]

I'm still trying to figure out why they can't turn that PC off.

 

[firsttimecaller]

are you actually able to dominate the tech tree?

that was always my goal, advance and take up slots (wonders i think they're called) so the AI couldn't develop as well or as fast.

but it seemed i couldn't lock out modern battleships and leave others in the steam age for example.

was i on a fool's errand to do this or a bad player because i couldn't?

 

[panton41]

I can't say I'm very good at Civ games anymore. I do like the one unit per tile of Civ V and the sprawling cities of Civ VI. I typically play on the easiest setting while half-drunk, so that may be part of my problem.

 

[Tofystedeth]

are you actually able to dominate the tech tree?

that was always my goal, advance and take up slots (wonders i think they're called) so the AI couldn't develop as well or as fast.

but it seemed i couldn't lock out modern battleships and leave others in the steam age for example.

was i on a fool's errand to do this or a bad player because i couldn't?

Fool's errand. Wonders were indeed 1 per game (in the earlier Civs. Later ones added national wonders, where each civilization could build 1 per game). If you could lock out the tech tree, the game would be won by whichever civ got the most initial tech in their starting location and got a lucky goody hut.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Also, at anything beyond mid-level play, going for Wonders is a good way to lose (except for very specific ones for a specific purpose).

 

[Dzov]

I'm still trying to figure out why they can't turn that PC off.

I imagine they don't want to enter all the hard drive parameters each time to get it to boot. or they don't know how.

 

[pug fugly]

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.

Ahh, I believe I can ruin your day by taking away all your free time. What you are looking for my friend is FreeCiv. http://freeciv.org/

It's an open source Civ style game with many different graphic packs to satisfy your nostalgia or provide something more modern, and rulesets to play Civ 1 or Civ 2 style games.

Ooooooohhhhhh SNAP! Thank you!!

 

[eas]

[deleted]

 

[just_cruisin]

Great article, could you do one on Gettysburg?

Thanks

 

[lister4269]

While I did play a few Sid Meier games after the original Pirates! I never really had as much fun with them as I did Pirates! It was mainly due to the confluence of my age, where I was in my evolution of a computer person and my time available. After running through various campaigns I thought I'd take a look at the saved games disk. I managed to figure out all values on it, where stuff is located on them and what to manipulate to keep a campaign going indefinitely resulting in a rank of " " above the highest in the game, Duke I think. I explored that map fully and got exceptionally good at ship-to-ship combat using sloops. Nice and fast and maneuverable.

 

[Danellicus]

Lee, thank you for explaining the "one more turn" phenomenon.


Former Civ II fanatic.

 

[Strategos777]

Civ II was good. But Alpha Centauri is the Greatest Strategy Game Ever Made.

 

[jazzylarry]

Civ II was good. But Alpha Centauri is the Greatest Strategy Game Ever Made.

Thanks to you and everyone else posting about SMAC, I'm now loading it. Curse you in advance for the soon to be disappearing hours syndrome I'm going to suffer!!!

 

[Hypnostene]

Civ II was good. But Alpha Centauri is the Greatest Strategy Game Ever Made.

Thanks to you and everyone else posting about SMAC, I'm now loading it. Curse you in advance for the soon to be disappearing hours syndrome I'm going to suffer!!!

If it's any consolation, after reading the comments I installed Civ 4. Woe is me. (And in your case, be strong! Remember, the drones need you, they look up to you!)

 

[Dzov]

Civ II was good. But Alpha Centauri is the Greatest Strategy Game Ever Made.

Thanks to you and everyone else posting about SMAC, I'm now loading it. Curse you in advance for the soon to be disappearing hours syndrome I'm going to suffer!!!

If it's any consolation, after reading the comments I installed Civ 4. Woe is me. (And in your case, be strong! Remember, the drones need you, they look up to you!)

Well after reading a thread on reddit about the Industrial Revolution mod for Factorio, I started up a game of that last night. It might actually be worse than civ.

 

[seelive]

what if... what if Sid modeled Gandhi after himself?
A genuinely nice person that can somehow go nuclear???

 

[jazzylarry]

Civ II was good. But Alpha Centauri is the Greatest Strategy Game Ever Made.

Thanks to you and everyone else posting about SMAC, I'm now loading it. Curse you in advance for the soon to be disappearing hours syndrome I'm going to suffer!!!

If it's any consolation, after reading the comments I installed Civ 4. Woe is me. (And in your case, be strong! Remember, the drones need you, they look up to you!)

Well after reading a thread on reddit about the Industrial Revolution mod for Factorio, I started up a game of that last night. It might actually be worse than civ.

Just stop... no more time sucking awesome game referrals please!!!!

 

[crmarvin42]

My first introduction to anything like this was Empire for my dad's Atari ST. He got the computer to do book keeping for his business, but quickly my brother and I spent more time playing Empre than he ever did on his bookeeping. May be why his business is gone, and I arguably have a passing addiction to Civilization on my iPad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYConA8rC20

 

[golmaal]

Civ III and Civ IV guy here....played it for thousands of hours and then some more. Once I got bored with playing regular games, I learned how to customize stuff.

I remember customizing my favorite civilization to have unlimited resources, super-efficient workers, awesome military units, and would force the AI to become my b*tches. I would wait for them to begin a nuclear war and would ultimately crush them all one by one.

It was quite interesting to see how the "AI" would react in a game that was extremely skewed against them. They would try to make pacts, give empty threats, backstab, and eventually go to war that would be the end of them.

 

[stephenfeather]

i still play civ all the time - civ iv is my fave (mainly because it still works on my modern mac and for some perverse reason i prefer squares to the far superior hexagons)

i think it'll break when the next version of the macos kills 32bit apps though. i may not be making that leap anytime soon.

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

 

[Bicentennial Douche]

i still play civ all the time - civ iv is my fave (mainly because it still works on my modern mac and for some perverse reason i prefer squares to the far superior hexagons)

i think it'll break when the next version of the macos kills 32bit apps though. i may not be making that leap anytime soon.

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

I'm holding off upgrading as Civ IV doesn't work :/

 

[Snazster]

Civ III and Civ IV guy here....played it for thousands of hours and then some more. Once I got bored with playing regular games, I learned how to customize stuff.

I remember customizing my favorite civilization to have unlimited resources, super-efficient workers, awesome military units, and would force the AI to become my b*tches. I would wait for them to begin a nuclear war and would ultimately crush them all one by one.

It was quite interesting to see how the "AI" would react in a game that was extremely skewed against them. They would try to make pacts, give empty threats, backstab, and eventually go to war that would be the end of them.

Sounds like Saddam Hussein.

 

[Deleted member 543677]

i still play civ all the time - civ iv is my fave (mainly because it still works on my modern mac and for some perverse reason i prefer squares to the far superior hexagons)

i think it'll break when the next version of the macos kills 32bit apps though. i may not be making that leap anytime soon.

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

Civ V doesn't run for the moment, but it is planned to get the 64bit update. Civ IV on the other hand did not make the cut -_-

 

[sphenodont]

And in related news, Francis Tresham passed on Wednesday.

https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/9612 ... is-tresham

 

[jazzylarry]

i still play civ all the time - civ iv is my fave (mainly because it still works on my modern mac and for some perverse reason i prefer squares to the far superior hexagons)

i think it'll break when the next version of the macos kills 32bit apps though. i may not be making that leap anytime soon.

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

Civ V doesn't run for the moment, but it is planned to get the 64bit update. Civ IV on the other hand did not make the cut -_-

It will, however, run in a VM of Mojave and earlier.

 

[Deleted member 543677]

i still play civ all the time - civ iv is my fave (mainly because it still works on my modern mac and for some perverse reason i prefer squares to the far superior hexagons)

i think it'll break when the next version of the macos kills 32bit apps though. i may not be making that leap anytime soon.

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

Civ V doesn't run for the moment, but it is planned to get the 64bit update. Civ IV on the other hand did not make the cut -_-

It will, however, run in a VM of Mojave and earlier.

Are you sure ? I believe you don’t have GPU support in VM making it impossible to run games and such in VMs

 

[jazzylarry]

i still play civ all the time - civ iv is my fave (mainly because it still works on my modern mac and for some perverse reason i prefer squares to the far superior hexagons)

i think it'll break when the next version of the macos kills 32bit apps though. i may not be making that leap anytime soon.

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

Civ V doesn't run for the moment, but it is planned to get the 64bit update. Civ IV on the other hand did not make the cut -_-

It will, however, run in a VM of Mojave and earlier.

Are you sure ? I believe you don’t have GPU support in VM making it impossible to run games and such in VMs

Well, I'm assuming there because I run my Adobe copy of CS3, some old games including some on a 10.6 rosetta enabled VM, and HDHomeRun's antenna strength app and HDTV OTA app in OSX VMs. I figure if all of those run without issues, Civ V would as well. I do own Civ V, I just haven't tried it in a VM on my Catalina laptop.

 

[Deleted member 543677]

i still play civ all the time - civ iv is my fave (mainly because it still works on my modern mac and for some perverse reason i prefer squares to the far superior hexagons)

i think it'll break when the next version of the macos kills 32bit apps though. i may not be making that leap anytime soon.

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

Civ V doesn't run for the moment, but it is planned to get the 64bit update. Civ IV on the other hand did not make the cut -_-

It will, however, run in a VM of Mojave and earlier.

Are you sure ? I believe you don’t have GPU support in VM making it impossible to run games and such in VMs

Well, I'm assuming there because I run my Adobe copy of CS3, some old games including some on a 10.6 rosetta enabled VM, and HDHomeRun's antenna strength app and HDTV OTA app in OSX VMs. I figure if all of those run without issues, Civ V would as well. I do own Civ V, I just haven't tried it in a VM on my Catalina laptop.

Have you installed any magic kext / driver in you Snow Leopard VM or is it just stock 10.6 ?
If you try and manage to get it work please let us know

 

[jazzylarry]

I upgraded my laptop to Catalina, and indeed, Civ 5 doesn't run. Civ 6 does, but prefer 5 to 6.

Civ V doesn't run for the moment, but it is planned to get the 64bit update. Civ IV on the other hand did not make the cut -_-

It will, however, run in a VM of Mojave and earlier.

Are you sure ? I believe you don’t have GPU support in VM making it impossible to run games and such in VMs

Well, I'm assuming there because I run my Adobe copy of CS3, some old games including some on a 10.6 rosetta enabled VM, and HDHomeRun's antenna strength app and HDTV OTA app in OSX VMs. I figure if all of those run without issues, Civ V would as well. I do own Civ V, I just haven't tried it in a VM on my Catalina laptop.

Have you installed any magic kext / driver in you Snow Leopard VM or is it just stock 10.6 ?
If you try and manage to get it work please let us know

The CS3 and HDHomeRun are on a vanilla 10.12 VM, running under Catalina, originally created under 10.13, IIRC.

The 10.6 VM is old (obviously) and I don't run it often. It is vanilla but I'll have to see about how it runs on Catalina. I assume it will run just as well as several of my other VMs that I do use more regularly do (various flavors of Linux and Windows XP through Win10) I moved several off my laptop during this latest upgrade as I decided to archive them and leave myself some extra space for new projects, otherwise I'd just start it up and let you know the details.