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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.'"
I believe Douglas Adams said it best...
"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."
All I want to know is how the damn Zulu spearman could possibly defeat ALL my tanks. HOW!?!?!?
There's probably someone just starting out in college who will be there for the next ten to fifteen years because of Civilization!
That's easy!
1. Build an army
2. ???
3. Profit!
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...)
Or did they interview the robotic dopelganger, Sim Meier? Not Sid Meier, but an incredible simulation.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
I think it is delightfully ironic that a religious term is having it's meaning twisted to further a secular goal.
Considering how religious people have been claiming their own definitions for well-established words these past few decades...
Blar.
What I'd like to ask Sid is why was the AI behind the Indians so agressively warlike when their 'face' was Mahatma Ghandi?
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.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
They only make slanting references to Civ II onward. No mention of the fact that Civ spawned an entire user community, a complete user created manual on the early internet describing all the intricacies of the game and "cheats" (utilizing bugs) that could stretch the game score far beyond what was envisioned.
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 into Civ II. There's a whole set of firsts buried in that time period that probably deserve mention. Civ was the first computer game I'm aware of that spawned such a large and intense interest in it that a user community spawned up around it that also culminated in new code being written.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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.
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?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Not quite - the authors here are sloppy. See: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=252035&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=19905043#199052 71 ...and note that the link you found also contains a genre modifier.
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.
I won my first few games of Civ III by culture, without ever knowing how I managed it at first. I just was very cultural it seemed. I once won a game of the original Master of Orion in about half an hour with the humans. I just expanded like mad, made friends with everyone, and pumped spending into population. The game quickly reached the threshold for voting for galactic emperor, and I had a relatively large population and was allied with everyone but the Silicoid I believe, so I won.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
I once won a culture victory as the English in which the only battle I ever fought was when a barbarian attacked one of my spearmen during than beginning. This wasn't because I was trying to play pacifist...it's just the way that game worked out.
The cake is a pie
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.
FairTax baby!
Also, in the original Civ, this is sort of a non military victory. I once had a game where I built only my first three cities in the best spots I could find in the near east of the Earth map. I then buffed the heck out of them. Diplomats back then had no support, so you could build as many as you want. I pumped my economy, and got the united nations wonder. I then surrounded enemy cities with diplomats so they couldn't work the land. When the population got sufficiently low, I would send a diplomat in to buy the city for dirt cheap, then open communications so they would offer peace. By the time I started preparing for war, I owned everything but the America's, with still only 3 original cities, and only capitols taken by force. I even had one city, and an enemy tank give a negative number as the asking price for conversion, because their satisfaction or whatever was so low. The tank paid me something like 1500 gold to join my army. Now that is persuasion.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
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.
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 me unless I'm just so far ahead of anyone else.
But generally speaking, military conquest is just more fun. But you still need to play diplomacy. You can't just go to war with everyone and expect to win like older versions of Civ. Also, larger civs take a big hit to their economy. So you could dominate nearly half the world and still have some a much smaller civ going neck and neck with you as far as technology. And if you're not careful, they'll get the spaceship before you.
Anyway, I just started playing the "Rhye's and Fall of Civilization" mod for Civ IV and it several new dimensions to the game. A big one is the concept of Unique Historical Victories (UHV). Each civ gets its own set of victory conditions based loosely on real history. For example, China has to have 2 Taoist Pagotas and 2 Confucius Acadamies by 1000 AD, no cities lost to Barbarians or Mongols by 1300 or so, and 120 military units by 1600. It is a real challenge. If you get bored trying to reach one Civ's victory conditions you can try another civ and get a completely different game. You can also play multiple civs at a time if you want. Oh, and different civs start at different, more realistic, times in the game. Normally in Civilization, all civs are created more or less equal. Not so in Rhye's and Fall.
Also, there is a concept of Civ stability in Rhye's mod. You could be kicking ass all over the place and suddenly lose half or even all of your cities to revolt or the resurrection of another civ if you don't maintain stability.
Civ IV is the best Civ yet, by far.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
'Call to Power'
:)
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 into pristine wilderness (the marvels of nanotechnology). So what you do is you make friends with the biggest power in the game and start mass producing these units.
You then send them to your 'friends' nation and park one next to every single one of their cities.
Then, when the time is right, in one turn you activate *all* of them.
In one turn your 'friend' becomes your (temporary) 'enemy' right before they get zapped back into the stoneage.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
Now of course it seems kind of funny how much I was sucked into the reality of the game these days but the tech is good enough now to suck anyone in, provided the designers know what they're doing. The first Aliens vs. Predator game really squicked me out when I was playing as an alien vs. humans. Sure, it's a first-person shooter but the designers did good work with the human behavior. They freaked out when they saw you, would fight or flee based on what you did. The civilians would run as far as they could. Once they were cornered, they would crouch down and whimper. It made me feel a bit disturbed to actually carry through with the killing. Black and White had the same thing going with the avatars there. The game was crappy and I never got the avatars beyond chibi stage but they did sit there and move about in a realistic fashion. You could beat them with the mouse hand for discipline and the sound that the blows would make and the way the creatures cried out was just a little too realistic for comfort.
I think the graphics are already too good to do realistic gore levels in games these days. It was cool to see the pixelated blood in Wolfenstein and Doom. Fatalities were sweet in the original Mortal Kombats. But we're getting very, very close to photorealistic these days. The models are certainly detailed enough that it would be squicky to see the bones and internal organs simulated for dismemberment. I think we're very close to the point where realistic levels of gore in a game will look like shit from rotten.com. I think that some designers will make a conscious choice to tone down how realistic they'll go while others will play up the carnography angle for kicks.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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 planet and saw it simply had not been fully conquered yet. So he kept hitting next turn after the computers had their chance. As it happened, the computer moved ships away from his planet and his rebellion rate raised enough that he was able to regain control and was back in the game. From there he played his cards right, got a proper fleet going, and went on to win the game. Now that's cool.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
Rather than 'Did Civilization', how about
'Created Civilization'
or
'Creater of all Civilizations (or at least the first two)'
Yeah, amazing what you can do on the easy levels.
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.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Can't remember how many hours I spent trying to get to the bottom of that danged dungeon to get the necklace. Only saw it happen once, actually. And it was the earliest game that could create interesting and fairly consistent random levels.
Of course many groups do it...we nerds are sticklers for accuracy...hence the angst over 'hacker'/'cracker'.
Blar.
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 was built. You know, back in the day when a caveman would hit a cavewoman on the head with a club, and drag her away and keep her all to himself.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Remember when every game came with a hundred page novella in addition to the manual?
I am playing Civilization IV right now. We are in the midst of the release of the Beyond The Sword expansion, so now is a pretty great time to start playing. The multiplayer arrangement is damned slick, but I still prefer the pace of single player on epic mode, with a huge map and a cooler full of beer.
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 some new wrenches into the cogs of the game's mechanics, especially (surprise surprise) when at war. The new expansion shifts the focus to the later modes of combat seen after the development of gunpowder. There are mods that use and abuse the engine to great avail, including everything from colonization of ocean space to shifting the basic algebra of the game. No two vanilla games are ever the same, but with all these options there is no reason to get bored.
Tonight I am picking up a game I had abandoned a few months ago, which I think really highlights the value of the Civilization franchise... you can always come back. Games like Rome: Total War or Galactic Civilizations feel a bit like a story game compared to the sandbox of Civ. It is also a savory break from FPS titles... I simply cannot tolerate another spin on the merry-go-round for Half-Life 2, and if I had a nickel for every hour I spent on Eve or Mechwarrior 3 I would be dictating this post to my sexy blond assistant across my marble desk in Hawaii. Those games are not even installed on any of these computers anymore, but I could wheel over to another desk and fire up Civilization I, II, or III if the inclination strikes. In the closet, I am sure there is a floppy with some Civ I saves ready to be savored anew. Hell FreeCiv even goes with you on your USB disk.
Upgrade the thing. You shouldn't need much. Exercise your brain and exorcise WOW or whatever forever. Sid hasn't let me down yet.
Plus, Spock narrates all of the science tree dialogs. Let me know how you like it.
FairTax baby!
Also, your post reminds me of a couple of great space colonization games. The first was released on floppy for DOS. It was calles Maelstrom. Something out there is claiming to be the modern incarnation, but it smelled of BS. The other is Imperium Galactica, and I bet that is the one your friend was referring to. It is a smooth game, and the sequel was too.
FairTax baby!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Go back a little further though, and the boxes weren't mostly air -- they were packed solid, and HEAVY. You'd get a big manual, usually a quick reference sheet and a book of some sort. I remember a couple of games (Star Glider maybe?) that came with multiple novellas.
But yeah, somewhere along the line that all changed and the big boxes contained a CD and some coupons or other advertising.