Civilization: Build a Game to Stand the Test of Time

    I still remember the first time I saw Civilization on the PC. It was the early nineties and my mother was working for a small law firm. One of the lawyers had a copy of the original Civ on one of the computers I was playing around on while my mom was at work one weekend. I loaded up one of the saved games and moved a few units around from one town to another and ordered everyone to start building barracks. And that was pretty much it... it may not sound like much but that's all it took to get me hooked on Civ. Even at the age of ten I was fascinated by the history of the the Romans and the Middle Ages, what kid doesn't like stories about conquest with swords and chariots? And even better, you can build castles and even tanks! It wasn't the war mechanics that got me hooked though...

    My first impressions of the original Civilization was, "Wow, I can build my own Roman Empire?!? And I can build medieval castles and play like the Roman Empire never crumbled?!?!?" The 'What if..' factor of Civ is what got me. I don't remember Civ having a scenario creator or world editor back then, it was pretty primitive back in the day. Of course, I was playing it on an old beige IBM PC running at 25mhz. This was back in 1992 and my gaming palette wasn't very broad so I was content with starting new games on randomized worlds where my Romans were likely to run into the Japanese or Zulus. As a ten year old I was totally pacifistic when it came to Civ. In fact, I remember building only enough military units to form a border with my neighbors... literally. So if I was playing as the Americans I'd put a line of rifleman along the Mexican border with the Aztecs to keep out any invaders. For some reason, the concept of fortifying towns with units didn't occur to me at all. I still remember the first time I dared to declare war on one of the computer players. It was a school night and just before bed I decided that I'd pool all of my troops into on massive attack. It worked and I conquered my first of many cities.

Civilization II: Rise of the Scenario

    My real obsession with the Civilization series began with Civ II. Civ II really was the killer app for our computer at the time. The old IBM did us well but it just couldn't handle Civ II. Our new IBM was a blazing fast 266mhz beast that ran Windows 95 AND it had a sound card. This was revolutionary stuff. I remember getting Civ II from Best Buy, which was about an hour and a half away, and reading the the instruction manual all the way back home which gave me motion sickness.

    Civilization II was a dramatically better game than its predecessor, even if it was fundamentally the same. With Civ II you still had a world of tiles which you could build cities on, cultivate or conquer. I wouldn't say Civ II's graphics were more 'realistic' than the original, but they were certainly better. Now you could have a recognizable Earth map with familiar geographic locations. Suddenly it got a lot more fun to play as the Romans. That is, until I loaded up the World War II scenario that came with Civ II. This WWII scenario changed everything. Instead of playing on a random tile set where your Romans' first alliance was with the Mongols, you could actually play as the Allies and try to defeat Hitler. This took the 'What if...' factor of Civ I to a new level.

    Some of my favorite moments with Civ II were spent playing the WWII scenario as the Soviets, trying to modernize my army before the Nazis got bored in France. My favorite strategy was to maintain peace with the Germans while my tanks made their way west from the Urals. Once I had a decently sized force, I could push into Hungary and Austria before heading southwest to Italy. I figured the Allies coming in from Britain would keep the Axis busy in the north so I'd cut off their access to North Africa. By mid 1943 the Nazis are usually pushed back within the borders of Germany and I'll start my assault on the Allies by retaking anything they've captured in France. Meanwhile, I'll sweep through Poland and grab Berlin while I build up a navy to lock down Britain.

Endless Replay Value

    The great thing about Civilization is that no two games are the same. Civ II originally came out in early 1996 and, by my best estimate, I played it nearly nonstop for probably four years (2000-2002 were my Diablo II years). The Civilization series is so great because of its ability to take something static like a topographic map of the world and place familiar civilizations in the appropriate place and then turn everyone loose. As the one human player among ten or more AI civs, I always found that part of the fun was to see how the AI civilizations developed when left to their own devices. Why was is that the Egyptians were the first to develop flight while the Americans are still using catapults and chariots?

    This was also part of the fun when playing the World War II scenario. Sure, everyone is expected to play as the Axis or Allies, and it's a lot of fun to do that, but the real challenge is in playing as the Spanish or French. I enjoyed the Spanish perspective because they were practically allied with the Axis but not at war with the Allies or French. The difficultly comes from the poor industry in Spain, which has the same units available as the Soviets but on a much smaller scale. By the time I'd be ready to invade France there would be little more left aside from Vichy and maybe another city or two. These were valuable pick ups because it got me close to the real action between the Allies and Axis in Belgium and Normandy. The best way to capture allied cities is to let the Axis wear down the defenses and then pick off the remainders with a couple Spanish tanks. If things didn't go the way I'd planned, I'd put all my eggs in one basket and send a transport full of tanks to Syria and then on to Tehran and down into Egypt. These side missions had no game changing impact on the main conflict between German and British forces, but the fantasy aspect of carrying out a Spanish surprise attack on French forces in Syria was pretty thrilling for me. If I managed to divert Allied forces away from the main event by attacking Alexandria or picking off random troops in France then the Axis can send more resource to the eastern front. For some reason I always enjoyed watching the AI sort out these battles from the sidelines much more than jumping in the middle as the Axis or Allies.

    The randomness of Civ II's AI allowed for more than just a few fun WWII scenarios. Civ II came with a world builder that you could use to... build worlds. I used it to build scenarios which were, at first, inspired by the WWII scenario. I made my own WWIII scenarios set in 1999 where the Balkans were invaded by Russia and Ukrainian troops invaded the Caucuses. I made a WWI scenario of my own where I set event triggers to go off at certain dates so in June 1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. I purposely didn't trigger a war between Germany and France because I wanted to see how the AI handled a proxy war in the Balkans first. After a few turns I triggered war between Germany and Russia as well as France. Another turn later a trigger the British declaration of war on Germany. In the end Germany was at war with Russia, France and Britain but for the first couple rounds it was up to the player and the AI as to how soon the situation got out of hand.

    There was a scenario pack released for Civ II that had an awesome Jules Verne scenario which I enjoy immensely. Normally I don't like scenarios with unrealistic units or fantasy lands, but this was incredibly well done. The Verne scenario started around 1875 on a modified Earth map. This scenario went through the late Industrial Victorian age and by the end the world was full of ironclad dreadnaughts, steam powered tanks and primitive aeroplanes. The setting was a lot of fun and the units had a great stylized look to them. The Jules Verne influence here was that there were still parts of the map which weren't full discovered yet. In the Amazon there were dinosaurs, in the south pacific there were mysterious islands and all over the map there were special triggered events that played out such as the encounter with the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This was by far my favorite 'fantasy' scenario. It did inspire me to make a few offbeat scenarios of my own, such as the Battle for Hoth.

Civilization III

    Civilization III was a fitting sequel to Civ II. There were many enhancements to the core of the game that changed the way it was played. The biggest change in my opinion was the introduction of strategic resources. Strategic resources were things like horses, oil and uranium without which you can't build cavalry, mechanized or nuclear units. This was a great leap forward for folks who wanted to take the realism factor of Civ to the next level. No longer could small isolated nations without access to oil be able to build tanks and airplanes. This opened up new sub-modes of play. Now it was possible to cut other players off from resources like oil or coal. This was possible because of another improvement to the game mechanics which was the introduction of cultural border. This lines served the same purpose as political boundaries in the real world. Within your own boundaries you are able to build improvements, harvest resources and have free reign. Other civs cannot enter your territory unless they sign an open borders agreement allowing them safe passage. Agreements like these were part of the newly expanded diplomatic system which allowed you to demand a wide variety of tribute or require other people to declare war/peace on your enemies/friends.

    The downside to Civ III is that it became more difficult to build scenarios and edit the graphics of units. This pretty much put an end to my scenario building days, as I didn't have the time or skills to build 3D units. I did, however, start focusing on my maps more and more. With all of these added features it because much more fulfilling to play a standard Earth map from beginning to end. The Civ II scenarios were a response to the somewhat limited diplomatic and trade aspects of the game, but now that those are full fleshed out I don't fill the need to play a limited range scenario. Your mileage may vary, but for me - I enjoy sitting down to an accurate, if scaled down, map of the Earth and playing from 4000 B.C. to current. There were still some things missing in Civ...

Civilization IV

    Civ III was nearly perfect, it had everything I liked about Civ II and all of the things I didn't realize I was missing until Sid Mier gave them to me. This is what I looked forward to about Civ IV. I wanted to know what other micromanaging aspects of the game they could throw in to make the game even more engrossing. Civilization IV's new improvements came in the form of vassalage (actually from the Warlords expansion) and religion. Religion had always been in the game to a certain extent... You could always research Monotheism, Polytheism, etc and there were a number of religious wonders of the world, but now you could actually establish a religion which would spread on its own over your trade network or by way of missionaries. Nations of the same religion got along better and declaring a formal religion would give you certain bonuses (based on whether you had a state religion or open to all religions, not necessarily Christian versus Muslim).

    Vassalage is something I was never really expecting Civ to incorporate but it worked out pretty good. It works like this: if you are one of the more powerful players in a game, you are able to become the feudal lord of another civ, sort of like a defensive pact expect the vassal can no longer declare war or make peace on its own terms. Vassals can be made to pay tribute of course, and if they grow larger than half the size of the protectorate nation, they will become liberated. It's a fun feature. Another little feature that came as part of the Warlords expansion for Civ IV is the random event generator. This can be a blessing and a curse as there are good and bad events that randomly occur. If you have a mine near one of your cities it is possible that there is collapse which kills workers. You'll have the option to either pay money to reinforce safety practices at the mine and rebuild it or you can let it crumble and the survivors in the town will become upset. Similarly there are occasionally political marriages that happen between two states that improve their diplomacy. These are a fun addition to the game which won't make or break the course of a game for you.

Civilization V

    I'm sure there is a Civilization V in the works, but I'm not sure I'm ready to play it just yet. Given the span of time between the release of each of the first three iterations of Civ, Civ IV has barely even left the gate. But release cycles are different than they used to be and we may be seeing a Civilization V released much sooner than I think. I'm hard pressed to think of any enhancements that I really want to see in Civ V. I think Warlords for Civ IV got it just about perfect. I love the United Nations feature, the random events and vassal states. All of these things are great and I hope they stay around in Civ V. I hope Civ V finds a way to scale a bit better than Civ III and Civ IV. There seems to be a huge draw on your computer's resources while playing a long game where there are many civilizations with numerous cities and hundreds of units. I'd love to see a Civ engine that could support thirty different nations on an enormous map. I don't often feel as if I've reached the limit of what Civilization can do, but late in the game it is possible to reach this point which does break that fourth wall a bit and makes the game less fun. Any way to expand Civ further in the future to underwater colonies and even into space would be an interesting change. I'm not sure I want to see huge robotic mech warriors running around, but unmanned vehicles, cyber warfare and terrorism are all aspects of modern war that the Civ series hasn't really touched on. Hopefully we'll see a Civilization V in the not-too-distant future.