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* YouFailHistoryForever:
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* YouFailHistoryForever: [[YouFailHistoryForever You Fail History Forever:]] See AnachronismStew above.
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* DefeatMeansFriendship: in Civ 5, Germany will sometimes recruit encamped barbarians and the Ottomans will recruit naval [[FanNickname barbs]]. In the fan-made NiGHTS mod, every civ gets these abilities.
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* DefeatMeansFriendship: in Civ 5, Germany will sometimes recruit encamped barbarians and the Ottomans will recruit naval [[FanNickname barbs]].barbs]] after defeating them. In the fan-made NiGHTS mod, every civ gets these abilities.
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* DefeatMeansFriendship: in Civ 5, Germany will sometimes recruit encamped barbarians and the Ottomans will recruit naval [[FanNickname barbs]]. In the fan-made NiGHTS mod, every civ gets these abilities.
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* TheStoic: Augustus Caesar in ''Civ 5''. Everything he says, including a declaration of war or the announcement of his total defeat, comes out bored and monotonous. His body language isn't more vivid either: he sits on his throne and occasionally waves a hand as he speaks.
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* TheStoic: Augustus Caesar in ''Civ 5''. Everything he says, including a declaration of war or the announcement of his total defeat, comes out bored and monotonous. His body language isn't more vivid either: he sits on his throne and occasionally waves a hand as he speaks. It's possible that [[FridgeBrilliance this is him after the Battle of the Teutoburger Forest]].
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* TheStoic: Augustus Caesar in ''Civ 5''. Everything he says, including a declaration of war or the announcement of his total defeat, comes out bored and monotonous. His body language isn't more vivid either: he sits on his throne and occasionally waves a hand as he speaks.
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** It's even worse (or better) due to the inclusion of the "heal instantly" promotion: units gain experience from taking damage and surviving, so if one has a high enough defense, gets reduced to one HP, and gains a level, they can be back to full strength immediately the next turn. In other words, ''attacking them only makes them stronger.''
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** The [[CosmeticAward achievements]] for ''Civilization V'' are almost entirely [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]]. [[DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog "The World Is a Mess, and I Just Need to Rule It"]], [[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined "Ruler of the Twelve Colonies"]], [[Series/DoctorWho "Exterminate! Exterminate!"]]...the list goes on. [[{{Pokemon}} And on.]] [[StarTrek And on.]] [[DaftPunk And on.]] [[TheLonelyIsland And on.]] [[{{Lolcats}} And on.]] [[BackToTheFuture And on.]] [[AltumVidetur And on.]] [[OverlyLongGag And on.]] [[http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationv/achievements.html Here's]] a list.
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** The [[CosmeticAward achievements]] for ''Civilization V'' are almost entirely [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]]. [[DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog "The World Is a Mess, and I Just Need to Rule It"]], [[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined "Ruler of the Twelve Colonies"]], [[Series/DoctorWho "Exterminate! Exterminate!"]]...the list goes on. [[{{Pokemon}} And on.]] [[StarTrek And on.]] [[DaftPunk [[Music/DaftPunk And on.]] [[TheLonelyIsland And on.]] [[{{Lolcats}} And on.]] [[BackToTheFuture [[Film/BackToTheFuture And on.]] [[AltumVidetur And on.]] [[OverlyLongGag And on.]] [[http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationv/achievements.html Here's]] a list.
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* CultureChopSuey: To emphasize how they're not supposed to be any one specific race, the narrator and son in the opening cinematic live in Mongol gers decorated with West African instruments and shields and wear Celtic and Arabic clothing.
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* CultureChopSuey: To emphasize how they're not supposed to be any one specific race, the narrator and son in the opening cinematic of ''V'' live in Mongol gers decorated with West African instruments and shields and wear Celtic and Arabic clothing.
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* CultureChopSuey: To emphasize how they're not supposed to be any one specific race, the narrator and son in the opening cinematic live in Mongol gers decorated with West African instruments and shields and wear Celtic and Arabic clothing.
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* VideoGameRemake: Not any of the games themselves, but various scenarios from the games are updated versions of earlier scenarios--for instance, the Mongol conquests DLC scenario from ''V'' is an improved version of the one in ''IV: Warlords''.
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** Genghis Khan's theme, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfpLk5AJ1ME Urtiin Duu]], is also a love song, and it's also incredibly ominous. They're not exaggerating it, either; [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcIgvxdRlIw here]] it is being performed in concert.
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* DemotedToExtra: Brennus and the Celts are demoted from a playable faction in ''4'' to being AI-only barbarians in ''Revolution'', and then brought back with the upcoming ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''5''.
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* DemotedToExtra: Brennus and the Celts are demoted from a playable faction in ''4'' to being AI-only barbarians in ''Revolution'', and then brought back (under Boudica) with the upcoming ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''5''.
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* DemotedToExtra: Brennus and the Celts are demoted from a playable faction in ''4'' to being AI-only barbarians in ''Revolution.''
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* DemotedToExtra: Brennus and the Celts are demoted from a playable faction in ''4'' to being AI-only barbarians in ''Revolution.''''Revolution'', and then brought back with the upcoming ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''5''.
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** Razing towns kills it´s entire population. Although capitals can never be razed, so it´s not possible to kill off entire races...in ''V''. Before that, the games allowed, even ''encouraged'' genocide.
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** Razing towns kills it´s its entire population. Although capitals can never be razed, so it´s not possible to kill off entire races...in ''V''. Before that, the games allowed, even ''encouraged'' genocide.
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** Razing towns kills it´s entire population. Although capitals can never be razed, so it´s not possible to kill off entire races.
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** Razing towns kills it´s entire population. Although capitals can never be razed, so it´s not possible to kill off entire races.races...in ''V''. Before that, the games allowed, even ''encouraged'' genocide.
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** In ''IV'', it's actually a case of SweetPollyOliver, since upon being captured the "male" spies still sound female.
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All aspects of the civilization are under the control of [[NonEntityGeneral the player]], including exploration, [[TechTree technological advancement]], expansion, material production, culture, religion, military development and deployment, foreign negotiations, and trade. The world was viewed from a 3/4 perspective until ''IV'' let you zoom in/out and move the camera around. The game's open-ended play, and the multiple settings (involving world size, terrain, opposing civilizations, multiple victory scenarios, game play speed and difficulty) mean that every game can be different from the previous one.
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All aspects of the civilization are under the control of [[NonEntityGeneral the player]], including exploration, [[TechTree technological advancement]], expansion, material production, culture, religion, military development and deployment, foreign negotiations, and trade. The world was viewed from a 3/4 perspective until ''IV'' let you zoom in/out and move the camera around.around, and took place on square-shaped tiles until ''V'' moved to hex. The game's open-ended play, and the multiple settings (involving world size, terrain, opposing civilizations, multiple victory scenarios, game play speed and difficulty) mean that every game can be different from the previous one.
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* LargeHam The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTIk80uBPg Military Advisor]] in 'II''.
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* LargeHam LargeHam: The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTIk80uBPg Military Advisor]] in 'II''. 'II''.
* LetsYouAndHimFight: In ''Civ IV'', the AI ''loves'' to manipulate you into fighting its enemies for it. It goes like this: A friendly AI civ declares war on an enemy. They invite you to join the war, and then once you're involved and have moved all your troops in, they'll sign a peace treaty with the enemy, leaving you to keep fighting alone and weakening you both.
* LetsYouAndHimFight: In ''Civ IV'', the AI ''loves'' to manipulate you into fighting its enemies for it. It goes like this: A friendly AI civ declares war on an enemy. They invite you to join the war, and then once you're involved and have moved all your troops in, they'll sign a peace treaty with the enemy, leaving you to keep fighting alone and weakening you both.
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** That cutscene is inspired by, and [[TheJimmyHartVersion borrows the music from]], ''{{Akira}}''. That says everything you need to know right there.
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** That cutscene is inspired by, and [[TheJimmyHartVersion [[SuspiciouslySimilarSong borrows the music from]], ''{{Akira}}''. That says everything you need to know right there.
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** Also, the option to continue playing a game after you won or lost is labeled "Just...one...more...turn")
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** Also, the option to continue playing a game after you won or lost is labeled [[JustOneMoreLevel "Just...one...more...turn")turn"]])
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** ''III'' will ask for confirmation when you change government types: "[[TheBeatles You say you want a revolution?]]" Your choices are "you know it's gonna be alright," and "you can count me out!"
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** ''III'' will ask for confirmation when you change government types: "[[TheBeatles "[[Music/TheBeatles You say you want a revolution?]]" Your choices are "you know it's gonna be alright," and "you can count me out!"
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*** There's a single, roundabout way to repair your rep. Example: Venice is at Permanent War with you. Venice gets conquered by another civ (say, by India). Then, when you swoop in with your Giant Death Robot and kick that bastard Ghandi out of Venice, you'll be given the option (alongside the normal options of "Annex" and "Create Puppet State") to "Liberate the City." This not only returns Venice back to being a sovereign city-state, but they'll be so grateful to be rid of Ghandi's tyrannical rule that your new relationship with Venice starts with the Allied bar heavily in the blue.
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*** There's a single, roundabout way to repair your rep. Example: Venice is at Permanent War with you. Venice gets conquered by another civ (say, by India). Then, when you swoop in with your Giant Death Robot and kick that bastard Ghandi Gandhi out of Venice, you'll be given the option (alongside the normal options of "Annex" and "Create Puppet State") to "Liberate the City." This not only returns Venice back to being a sovereign city-state, but they'll be so grateful to be rid of Ghandi's Gandhi's tyrannical rule that your new relationship with Venice starts with the Allied bar heavily in the blue.
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*** [[FridgeBrilliance Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty good fit for a game called Civilization.]]
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*** [[FridgeBrilliance Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty good fit for a game called Civilization.]]
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\"This Troper\" is banned from the site. Personal anecdotes are not welcome. Also, Great Prophets don\'t found religions, so the \"funny example\" is not possible.
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** AnachronismStew + BornInTheWrongCentury (and perhaps GenderFlip) = HilarityEnsues. Because of how the system randomly selects names for great people it usually ends up with [[HilariousInHindsight some truly bizarre results]]. For example Jean De Arc, born in 500BC and goes off to found Judaism or even worse Mohammad, born in 5BC goes off to found Christianity.
*** This Troper has used [[BeyondTheImpossible Muhammad to found Christianity in 300BC and in another game, Judaism a few turns in]].
*** This Troper has used [[BeyondTheImpossible Muhammad to found Christianity in 300BC and in another game, Judaism a few turns in]].
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*** This Troper has used [[BeyondTheImpossible Muhammad to found Christianity in 300BC and in another game, Judaism a few turns in]].
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[[caption-width-right:319:[-Y'know, [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer if Gandhi were really pissed off]]-].]]
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[[caption-width-right:319:[-Y'know, [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer [[{{Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer}} if Gandhi were really pissed off]]-].]]
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* SuspiciouslySmallArmy: A "unit" can be anything from one ship or aircraft to 10 soldiers, depending on the game.
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* SuspiciouslySmallArmy: A "unit" can be anything from one ship or aircraft to 10 soldiers, depending on the game. Most players, however, seem to regard this as a non-issue, regarding land and air units to represent larger groupings (what seems to be ten Riflemen is actually a whole division of rifles; what seems to be one Jet Fighter is actually a whole wing of jets). For naval units, early units like Galleys seem to be groupings, but it would actually make sense for later units to be individual ships (those things are big and expensive enough, and tend to be built in smaller numbers anyway).
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* CulturedBadass and WarForFunAndProfit: The Honor tree post 1.4.X, adopting it would give a culture bonus similar bonus to what Montezuma's special ability gives (and stacks with the former's ability doubling the culture output) and finishing it would allow you to earn money for killing enemy units, making WarForFunAndProfit a viable tactic for fighting oriented Civs like Germany, Japan, the Aztecs and the like.
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** Most egregiously, the German version even omits Hitler's name in the aforementioned Fascism tech quote, and instead gives "a German dictator" as source.
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[[quoteright:320:[[ScrewTheRulesIHaveANuke http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/civ1.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:319:[-Y'know, [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer if Gandhi were really pissed off]]-].]]
->''"I have discovered. I have led. I have conquered. I have inspired. I have [[OnceAnEpisode built a civilization to stand the test of time]]. What will your civilization stand for?"''
--> -- '''''Civilization V'' trailer'''
{{Civilization}} is a popular [[FourX "4X"]] game developed by SidMeier. The original game was developed in 1991, and there have been four [[NumberedSequels direct sequels]] ([[MissionPackSequel all of which are sequentially improved refinements and updates on the basic concept]]), numerous expansion packs, and many spin-offs (''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', ''{{Colonization}}'', ''[[InNameOnly Civilization: Call To Power]]''), as well as the much simplified ''Civilization Revolution'' for home consoles, the NintendoDS and [=iPhone=], and ''Civ World'' for {{Facebook}}. The game was originally inspired by a {{Board Game|s}}, and has since [[RecursiveAdaptation spawned two others]]. Many polls and lists of the best computer games ever developed have, at various times, listed several of the games in the series, often at #1.
The general concept is that the player controls a civilization from the stone age through the present day into the space age. The first installments gave you two ways to win: conquering everyone, or [[SidMeiersAlphaCentauri sending a colony to Alpha Centauri]]. Later, three more conditions were added: get elected leader of the world by the UnitedNations, controlling a dominant chunk of the planet (which kind of obsoletes the "conquer everyone" goal, which is probably why it was removed again later), or create a culture so influential that it engulfs everyone else's.
All aspects of the civilization are under the control of [[NonEntityGeneral the player]], including exploration, [[TechTree technological advancement]], expansion, material production, culture, religion, military development and deployment, foreign negotiations, and trade. The world was viewed from a 3/4 perspective until ''IV'' let you zoom in/out and move the camera around. The game's open-ended play, and the multiple settings (involving world size, terrain, opposing civilizations, multiple victory scenarios, game play speed and difficulty) mean that every game can be different from the previous one.
It is (in)famous for leading to gameplay sessions that extend well past the player's original self-imposed deadline. [[http://www.civanon.org/home.shtml So much, a joke 'Civilization Anonymous' website was made.]]
"Baba Yetu", the menu music from ''Civilization IV'' [[hottip:*:Technically, the re-arrangement of the piece for the album "Calling All Dawns."]] became the first song from a video game to ever win a Grammy Award, which hopefully will spur the Grammy Awards into including an award for "interactive fiction" music scores and songs.
----
!!This game presents examples of the following tropes:
* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Many, as a game which truly approximated all the headaches of running an Empire would only be interesting to professors and megalomaniacs.
* AintTooProudToBeg: In ''Civ V'' leaders that are losing a war tend to offer peace agreements in exchange for every city but their capital, all their resources for 30 turns, all their income for 30 turns, their entire treasury, and their wives and daughters as your concubines (well, OK, not that last one). Oh, and guess how hard it'll be to take that lone capital once the 30 turns are over. They do it to other AIs too, so the number of powerful nations on any given continent can drop quite quickly.
** On the flip side, some leaders ''will'' ask for peace, but only if ''you'' give all your money and loads of strategic and luxury resources, [[TooDumbToLive even if you are steamrolling across the empire]].
** Likewise, the minute you get two sources of a luxury in ''Civ5'', a bunch of other leaders will offer you a Declaration of Friendship. Their sole motivation is to ask you to loan them that second luxury source for free. (A canny player will turn down the Declaration itself, as accepting Friendship but then denying a request is a hit to your reputation.)
* TheAllSeeingAI: Used completely straight in earlier versions. Mostly averted in ''Civilization IV'', except that the AI negotiators know precisely what the relative values of various goods are, leading to weirdness such as knowing the value of trading world maps when they shouldn't know what's on yours.
* AnachronismStew: Somewhat unavoidable in a freeform game that features a myriad of historical civilizations, many of whom never existed in the same time/place as one another. Add religions and government styles to the mix and you have a recipe for oddness.
** One of the oddest examples of this is the ''Oxford University'' National Wonder in ''Civ IV''. The significance of Oxford, and the reason it's one of the world's leading establishments today is that it was the first University set up in the world (at least in any format we'd vaguely recognise today). However, in the game, you need to have built at least 6 other Universities to construct it...
** The tech tree, at least in ''Civ IV'', is however set up to make a ''few'' things happen "on time" in a normal game. Christianity is typically created around 30 AD and a Civilization will get the tech to find the new world (on a map type that supports it) around 1500 AD and to colonize it a few turns later. Nothing flat out ''stops'' you from progressing to these points earlier if you are devoted or get lucky with a great person though.
%% No specific examples, please. We get it.
** AnachronismStew + BornInTheWrongCentury (and perhaps GenderFlip) = HilarityEnsues. Because of how the system randomly selects names for great people it usually ends up with [[HilariousInHindsight some truly bizarre results]]. For example Jean De Arc, born in 500BC and goes off to found Judaism or even worse Mohammad, born in 5BC goes off to found Christianity.
* AndThatsTerrible: The Civilopedia avoids calling any civic option immoral or good. It rightfully points out a few are really impractical and unworkable, but never immoral. Things like "Police State" and "State Property" are given weights of their benefits and negatives, but no discussion of their morality -- '''except''' "Slavery" and "Emancipation", which are described as being of "basic moral repugnance" and a "somewhat utopian society" respectively.
** "Slavery" and "Emancipation" get the pros and cons treatment as well.
* AndYourRewardIsInteriorDecorating
* ArcWords: "Test of time."
* ArmyOfLawyers: In ''Call to Power'' and its sequel, once you develop to the Modern Era, you can ''literally'' train Lawyers and Corporate Branches to wage economic warfare on your enemies.
* ArmyOfTheAges: the theme for Civilization IV: Warlord's box art.
** And of course you and your enemies' armies could become this as well if you don't bother upgrading your units.
* ArtificialStupidity: So much over the various installments that all the examples were moved to the trope page.
* AscendedFanboy: Aside from the first game, all the following games have been designed by people other than Sid who has generally only acted as an overwatching executive producer. Most notable in ''Civilization V'' in which the lead designer came from the modding community and is only around 25 years old.
* AscendedMeme: ''Civilization V'' has three: at the end of the tech tree are Giant Death Robots, a long running joke on several fansites; using a Great Artist to make borders expand is now explicitly named a "Culture Bomb", which was a FanNickname for the process in ''Civ IV''; and [[MahatmaGandhi Gandhi]]'s AI is tailored to put all his resources to building nukes.[[hottip:*:They must have been thinking about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi a different Gandhi]].]]
** Also, the option to continue playing a game after you won or lost is labeled "Just...one...more...turn")
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Averted with Great Generals (and the mongol equivalent the Khan), who are {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s whose only offensive capability is to make other units stronger. But to be fair, the Great General is just one guy while the regular units presumably represent regiments (give or take depending on the era).
* AwesomeButImpractical: The Internet wonder from ''Civilization IV'' grants you any tech known by two other civilizations. This would be awesome but for the fact that it's at the very end of the tech tree for most players, meaning that either it'll be built after it's needed or the AI will get it first. However, there is a specific strategy that ignores all other endgame tech to get the Internet built early, making it actually useful.
** In ''Civilization II'', the Great Library wonder did the same thing, about 100 turns into the match, if you aimed straight for it, making it a potential GameBreaker until it was made obsolete by later tech.
** The Space Elevator in Civilization IV gives you a big boost to spaceship construction. Problem with it is that it's so frequently so expensive and requires a tech not needed for the spaceship that you're usually better off building another spaceship part in its place.
** The Great Colossus wonder in Civilization V used to be this. It had a nice benefit, but was lost once a certain, rather early, technology was discovered by any player. It was later patched to have a slightly different effect and not become obsolete.
** The [[AscendedMeme Giant Death Robot]] in V comes so late that anyone aiming for a domination victory will probably get it before having an opportunity to build the GDR. It also requires uranium which could be used on the earlier and quicker-to-build nuclear options.
*** On the other hand, you can only use a nuke once, whereas a GDR will keep going and going and going... In fact a handful of them can win you the entire map if used judiciously and with air support.
* {{BFS}}:
** A majority of leaders in ''Civilization V'' carry swords with them when you meet them for diplomacy, but special mention must go to Askia and OdaNobunaga. Askia carries an impressive-looking two-handed broadsword, and Nobunaga carries three giant katanas!
** On the unit side of the scale, broadswordsmen fall on this category.
* BigBrotherIsWatching: Two wonders from ''Call to Power'', [[GovernmentAgencyOfFiction The Agency]] and the [[MasterComputer AI Entity]]. The AI Entity in particular is [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel terrifying]]--[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPuU8Pq9D3Q&NR=1 see for yourself]], but the Agency [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-GymYlnV2I&NR=1 doesn't lack for disturbing]], either.
* BloodKnight: There are certain rulers who seem to really, ''really'' enjoy war. If you find yourself on a map with Queen Isabella of Spain, Shaka Zulu, or Montezuma of the Aztecs, expect them to attack you at some point, even if they have [[ArtificialStupidity absolutely no chance of victory]], and ''especially'' if they don't share your religion.
** Somewhat justified with Montezuma in ''Civilization V'', as his trait is to generate culture by killing enemy units.
* BlowGun: In ''Revolution'', one of the barbarian tribes you can encounter has a spokesman who threatens you with a blow gun.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: On rare occasions, when declaring war, Alexander the Great will look the player in the eye and ask, "You didn't really think I was going for a cultural victory, did you?" Hannibal does this too sometimes.
** Some of the reasons why another Civ isn't on good terms with you dip into this. From Civilization V: "They think we are trying to win the game in a manner similar to theirs, and they don't like it."
** In IV, the AI will never trade away any techs required to build spaceship parts, because "we'd rather win the game, thank you very much."
* {{Cap}}: As of ''Civilization V'', [[YouRequireMoreVespeneGas strategic resources]] work this way. However, it doesn't drain your existing stockpiles, it just determines ''how many'' of a thing you can have at once—for instance, if you have only four herds of horses, that's how many Horse Archers you can own simultaneously. This is not a great compromise, but it's way better than both ''Civilization III'', when resources would run out at [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the most inconvenient time possible]], and every other game, where they never ran out at all.
** The implementation of resources in ''Civ 3'' didn't help with this. What you may expect is a Cap on how much the resource can be used before it disappears, and that, annoyingly, there's no counter for how much longer it will last. Actually, there is no Cap at all; each resource just has a small % chance of disappearing ''every'' turn, even if you just started using them last turn.
* CartoonBomb: Used by Grenadiers in ''Civilization IV''. Seeing as {{Cartoon Bomb}}s are modeled after early cast-iron, black-powder grenades, this is [[JustifiedTrope not surprising]].
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[CatherineTheGreat Catherine]] in ''Civilization IV'' has a unique aspect programed into her AI that she is the ''only'' leader willing to attack a friendly if the player bribes her.
** Fairly common in "Civilization V", and recently the dialogue was updated to show when the AI does it. Once you´ve been at war with a player, you can expect it to happen again just after the peace treaty expires, even if they´ve been acting friendly and forgiving. And if you liberate a capital for a defeated AI, they will often denounce you just a few turns later... although they are still forced to vote for you in an UN Vote.
** Some [=AIs=] will take you to war several times, negotiate peace, and go [[BlatantLies right back to being friendly again]].
** Really, take it as a rule: If the AI thinks you're too weak to defend yourself ([[ArtificialStupidity and even when you really aren't]]), you ''will'' be attacked.
** Sometimes when they act friendly, you might think they're actually friendly, because you've gone out of your to keep them satisfied with you, but behind the scenes they're angry at you for reasons you can't predict, like the famous "they think you're trying to win in a manner similar to them, and they don't like it!"
* ChewingTheScenery: Arguably some quotes in Civ 5. "A horse! A horse! My[[{{Beat}} ...]] '''KINGDOM''' for a horse!"
* ChurchMilitant: Your chosen faith under Theocracy.
* ComicBookTime: In addition to an extreme case of VideoGameTime (it's possible for a battle's outcome to change due to a forest suddenly growing around the defenders), named characters (civilization leaders and Great People) are immortal, and change appearance to suit the era. Also, in the Civ II "thingy" Test Of Time, you may notice that in extended original the time changes from 100s of years to singular over the course of 3000 B.C. to 1900 A.D. Makes you worry that it takes 1000 years to build A BARRACKS early game where a CITY in the late game takes only a few YEARS TO SET UP. EVERY. LAST. BUILDING. Worrying.
* ACommanderIsYou: Starting with ''Civilization III'', each faction can be loosely mapped to one or more of the Gimmick options, although some also fit the Spammer or Brute Force options - but see also SeparateButIdentical.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: This game has an entire folder on the trope page.
* TheComputerIsYourFriend: The [[MasterComputer AI Entity]] in ''Call To Power'' allows you to run your civilization with absolute efficiency... until it [[AIIsACrapshoot rebels against you]].
* TheComputerShallTauntYou: If another civilization considers itself superior to you, they'll let you know it, and they can be quite smug and condescending.
* CosmeticAward: Improving your palace in the original Civilization, your throne room in Civilization II. and your castle in Civilization III was awesome, but had no impact on gameplay.
* TheCoverChangesTheMeaning: In ''Civilization V'', every leader has a theme based on a well known folk tune from his or her respective culture ("America The Beautiful" for Washington, "I Vow To Thee My Country" for ElizabethI, etc.) There are two arrangements for each tune - one for when you are at peace with the civ and one for wartime. The wartime tunes often change a decidedly pleasant and uplifting tune into something sinister.
* CreatorCameo: Sid himself appears in every game as an advisor.
* CriticalExistenceFailure: Mostly played straight, but some versions of the game avert this by reducing the movement points and combat power of heavily damaged units. In ''Civilization V'', which averts it for most civs, it's actually the Japanese's unique perk -- their units don't get reduced stats for being damaged.
* CurbStompBattle: Alarmingly common in ''Civilization V'', from tearing through a undamaged city with a [[HumongousMecha Giant Death Robot]] or to seemingly exaggerated and extreme cases of bringing down an Enemy Empire with five [[TankGoodness Modern Armor units]].
* CutScene: The Wonders get them. In ''Civilization II'' these [[FullMotionVideo were made of]] StockFootage, later games have renders.
* DamageOverTime: In ''Civilization II'', helicopters received minor damage for every turn they spent in midair -- this was intended to simulate their limited fuel reserves without requiring them to return to base every time. Later ''Civ'' games removed this.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: In ''Civilization IV'', due to how reduced HitPoints also reduce combat strength, it is relatively common for two or three low tech units to gang up on and defeat high tech units. This, however, is arguably superior to previous versions in which [[OneHitPointWonder a single die roll]] determined the outcome of each battle. In ''Civilization II'', the hit point system allowed units to be overwhelmed by enough less powerful ones, though the resource costs would usually make doing this an impractical option. City sieges would also sometimes turn into this, due to the high defense bonuses of city wall type improvements.
** In ''V'', every unit has 10 hit points. A stronger unit will lose less HP and inflict more, but every encounter between two melee units will take at least 1 HP from both units involved. Ranged attacks also do at least 1 HP of damage, and they don't injure the attacker. Long story short, five ancient-era archers with the "logistics" promotion (which allows them to attack twice) are guaranteed to take down even the Giant Death Robot if they attack first.
* DeadpanSnarker: ''Civilization V'''s Civilopedia [[LampshadeHanging points out]] some of the more complicated and absurd parts of history that it goes over for certain entries, and is by no means above poking more fun at them if it feels warranted.
* DemotedToExtra: Brennus and the Celts are demoted from a playable faction in ''4'' to being AI-only barbarians in ''Revolution.''
* DevelopmentGag: The screen names of Beta testers appear as Great Spies (probably because there aren't many historical great spies whose names we actually know -- [[DontExplainTheJoke because then they wouldn't be very good spies.]])
* DiagonalSpeedBoost: In every game up to ''Civilization V'', which is played on hex tiles.
* EasyModeMockery: The game compares you to a famous (or infamous) world leader after it ends. On easy mode, you can beat the AI by a mile and still get compared to "WarrenGHarding," or worse, "DanQuayle." See TakeThat.
* EarlyBirdCameo: In Civ V, Harald Bluetooth and the Denmark faction are available as a DLC faction, but interestingly glimpses of a Viking-type faction can be seen in the opening cinematics.
* EasyCommunication: All of your soldiers and cities can be instantly ordered to do anything, even in the ages before radio. ''Possibly'' justified by having turns take much longer in earlier eras.
* EasyLogistics: Troops can "heal" (replenish their numbers) regardless of how far away they are from your civilization, and Civ 5 takes this a step further with the "instant heal" promotion. Incidentally, the same game has a Logistics promotion, which allows ranged siege units to attack twice in one turn.
* ElvisLives: The King usually stops by for a cameo in each game.
* EncyclopediaExposita: The Civilopedia, which contains just about everything you need to know about the game's structures, units, technologies, terrain and resources, with a smattering of Actual History scattered throughout.
* EveryoneMeetsEveryone: Normally the main action in the beginning of the game.
* EveryoneIsBi: Leaders who flirt with the player at high relation do so regardless of the gender of the leader selected by the player. Catherine the Great in ''Civilization IV'' is particularly notorious.
--> '''Catherine''' ''We were defeated, so this makes me your slave. [[FetishFuel I suppose there are worse fates]].''
* EverythingsWorseWithBears: Bears are the greatest menace to early explorers in ''Civilization IV''... at least until the roving barbarians get their hands on [[ItGotWorse bronze weaponry]].
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The aforementioned Giant Death Robot. Yes, that's the official name.
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: A lot of the diplomacy actions in ''Civilization IV'' lean in this direction, as you'll be presented with a request that will inevitably make either the requester or a third party angry. Next turn, that other party will make a similar demand in reverse. The price of neutrality (if you don't ''want'' to choose sides) is to be hated by nearly everyone.
** Also happens in "V" to a certain extent. Your friends will request spare luxury resources and gold on a regular basis, without giving anything back. Although agreeing will improve relations a bit, they can get pretty greedy and if you decline once, they stop asking forever and it´s also a permanent diplomatic penalty. And if you make a request yourself, they will almost always decline and mark it as a penalty anyway...
* FanService: ''Civilization V'''s leaders of either gender. Among the males we have Ramkamhaeng, Montezuma, and [[DownloadableContent Kamehameha]], all of whom are [[WalkingShirtlessScene basically shirtless]], while among the women we have Catherine the Great, whose PimpedOutDress has an ImpossiblyLowNeckline
* FictionalHoliday: [[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29661/Maryland_Declares_September_21_Civilization_V_Day.php Not so fictional.]]
** There still is "We Love the King Day".
* FogOfWar
* FourX: One of the titans of the genre.
* TheFundamentalist: Isabella in ''Civilization IV''. If you aren't whatever religion she is (usually Buddhist), prepare for WAR! There is an actual government type called Fundamentalism in ''Civilization II'', and a Theocracy civic in ''Civilization IV''. ''Civ 5'' has several "Social Policies", of which one can have either Piety or Rationalism. You are forever barred from the other, likely for this reason.
* GameMod: Tons, including FallFromHeaven.
* GenderBender: In ''Civilization II'', Leonardo's Workshop automatically upgrades all your Diplomat units to Spy units. The Diplomat is depicted as a little man in formal wear, the Spy as a FemmeFatale in a LittleBlackDress. Happens again in ''Civilization IV'', as pre-industrial era spies, men in black robes, transform into women in skin tight stealth suits upon reaching the industrial era.
* GenderFlip: All great people in ''Civilization IV'' are represented by male units, though a significant number of them are actually women. Among other things, this gives Joan of Arc quite an impressive beard.
* GeoEffects: All types of terrain give various offensive and/or defensive bonuses to units attacking to or defending from them. Furthermore, all types of terrain produce specific amounts of Food, Gold and Production, which can be altered with "Improvements" such as farms, watermills, railroads, etc.
** V's hex system now includes actual line of sight, and ranged units will need a clear shot at their target. If a hill, forest or mountain is one hex between the target and the unit, no dice. (Unless you're in the modern era...)
* GlassCannon: Cannons (duh). Also, catapults and various other forms of artillery. Generally portrayed as a powerful offensive or bombardment unit with little to no defensive capabilities whatsoever, which make them easy to capture if left undefended by another military unit.
** In ''Civilization V'', archers, catapults and other ranged units can now fire from further away than in front of the enemy's faces (usually leading in previous games to getting smacked down without an escort on the same tile). A necessary change as they're still as fragile as ever and units can't share spaces.
* GlobalCurrency: Undifferentiated gold (which is still used before you research "currency" and gain the ability to trade it with other players). Strangely enough, in ''Civilization IV'' you can use the UnitedNations to enact a single global currency, boosting trade. This is probably because modeling currency exchange rates is well beyond the scope of the game's economic system.
* GlobalWarming: Better watch that pollution, or your cities will sink! More recent games have backed off on this and will instead occasionally alter a terrain square to an inferior type, such as grasslands to deserts.
** ''Call To Power'', which continued much further into the future than a normal Civilization title, took this concept to its logical conclusion. The problem got much, much worse before ultimately getting better through the use of advanced technology (and, possibly, ecoterrorism). Of course, by that point, the majority of your population will have likely already relocated to undersea cities and/or space, rendering the point somewhat moot.
* AGodAmI: Ramesses II from ''Civilization V''. Appropriate since [[TruthInTelevision all Egyptian Pharaohs were considered gods.]] Occasionally Alexander the Great gives this to you when you beat him, he goes into a HeroicBSOD and exclaims "How could this be? I am Heir to the Gods!"
** Subverted in ''Civ V'', by Nebuchadnezzer II of Babylon, who when you greet him will say "The fools outside think I am a god. That seems unlikely."
** A few others dip into this as well, depending on what culture they had. Montezuma, for instance.
* GracefulLoser: Some of the leaders in ''Civilization V''.
* HaveAGayOldTime: In ''Civilization II'', when you changed governments, the newspaper would announce, "[Your Citizens] Are Revolting!" To which all the AI players' citizens would go, "Well, duh."
* HerdHittingAttack: Artillery in ''Civilization IV'', and others with the Collateral Damage promotion. All units in the original ''Civilization'' and ''Civilization II''.
** Not to mention nukes.
* HistoricalBeautyUpdate: ''Civilization Revolution's'' national leaders, especially the females.
** Surprisingly inverted in ''Civilization III'' for the Greeks, when for some reason they make Alexander the Great, actually one of the few genuinely good-looking historical leaders, pretty scrawny and unattractive.
* HistoricalInJoke: Why does [[NapoleonBonaparte Napoleon]]'s unique ability in ''V'' expire with the discovery of Steam Power? Because, as ''IV'' quoted, Napoleon [[ItWillNeverCatchOn thought the concept was nonsense]].
* HollywoodHistory: There has not been a single game where Roman Legionaries have been properly depicted.
* HumanPopsicle: The ones that go into the spaceship that flies to ''AlphaCentauri''.
** ''Call To Power'' features cryogenic freezing chambers. In addition to their normal benefits, they also provide citizens of a Theocratic government a happiness boost. [[FigureItOutYourself Derive from that what you will]].
* HumansAreWhite: With the exception of special units, all units in ''Civilization III'' and ''IV'' are white. However, the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''Civilization IV'' added different skin sets for different civilizations (Mali has black swordsmen etc).
* HumongousMecha: ''Civilization V'' features the "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Giant Death Robot]]", which can only be acquired in the late game and is a way to cement your CurbStompBattle victory.
** The official [[ExpansionPack Beyond the Sword]] [[GameMod mod]] "The Next War" also features one.
* IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: Just click the link, there's a big list on the trope page.
* InferredHolocaust:
** In an eerily literal example, one of the expansion packs to ''Civilization III'' includes a [[ThoseWackyNazis fascist]] government type; immediately after a civilization adopts fascism, it suffers a slight population loss for a few turns, presumably as `undesirables` are, ahem, [[ThePurge purged]] by the SecretPolice.
** Forced labor (present in several forms of government in the same game, and under the Slavery civic in ''Civ IV'') has pretty much the same connotation. More liberal forms of government replace this method with the standard option to rush-build things by throwing enough money at it.
** Razing towns kills it´s entire population. Although capitals can never be razed, so it´s not possible to kill off entire races.
* InjunCountry: One of the civilizations added in "Beyond the Sword" is "Native America"[[hottip:*:Their leader is Sitting Bull of the Lakota, their Unique Unit is the Cheyenne Dog Soldier and their Unique Building is the Haida Totem Pole]]. Not the Iroquois, not the Lakota, not the Haida, [[CriticalResearchFailure just "Native America"]]. For the record, this makes as much sense as a Europe civ lead by Napoleon, whose Unique Unit is the Cossack and the Unique Building being the Forum. This is what happens when you want to do something to include Native American civilizations, but don't have enough room for all of them. (You could make an entire Civ mod out of [=AmerInd=] wars.)
** There is a mod that fixes this by including every major Native American civilization, [[ShownTheirWork using their own native names]].
* InstantAwesomeJustAddMecha: Civilization 5's Giant Death Robot (yes, it's actually called that.)
* InstantWinCondition: Once an ending condition is reached, that civ wins, no matter how the actual situation looks at the time. There could be a massive column of tanks ready to flatten an enemy's capital, but if the spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri, they win.
** Or, more egregiously, by cultural victory. In Civ IV for example, you win instantly for getting your third city up to legendary culture, regardless of whether it's in the process of being destroyed.
* {{Irony}}: The United Nations in ''Civilization II'' actually makes it easier to wage war on nations that aren't willing to fight.
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: Napoleon providing a Real Life example is the quote for steam power in ''IV''.
** Added on to in ''V'': Napoleon gets free culture per turn until Steam Power is discovered.
* JustOneMoreLevel: Some games directly invoke this by prompting the player with the option "Just one more turn" after they win the game or when they try to quit.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Played straight in ''III'. The best time to be playing Japanese is during the Medieval Era in that game. Once you get access to the Samurai, you can hack and slash your way through any and all other Civs using a pure Samurai force, until the gunpowder era finally renders them obsolete.
** Play somewhat straight in 4, as well. Instead of replacing knights, samurai instead replace Macemen, who are the best melee units in the game. Against other melee units, the samurai's strong attack and First Strikes make them damn near unstoppable. Against knights, which serve as the medieval cavalry unit, [[CurbStompBattle it's a whole 'nother story]].
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: You can play this game far into the future as you like, rack up a bunch of "Future Techs", discover Fusion Power and journey into the stars. However, weapons technology will never pass the modern day era. Can be averted with player-made modifications or official scenarios, such as Next War and Final Frontier in ''Beyond the Sword''. The non-canonical ''Civilization: Call To Power'' averted this trope by introducing two new Ages: Genetic and Diamond, featuring advanced plasma and fusion-based weaponry.
* LargeHam The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTIk80uBPg Military Advisor]] in 'II''.
* LittleBlackDress: Worn by the Spy in ''Civilization II''.
* LostTechnology: In ''Civilization V'', Ancient Ruins have a chance of giving a military unit a free upgrade. In the early game, you can get Archers, Spearmen, and even Swordsmen before researching them normally. It takes a turn for the absurd, however, when Ancient Ruins that have been sitting untouched since the beginning of the game can upgrade your Musketmen to Infantry, or your Tank to a Modern Armor. It's less likely to happen now since an official patch has made it impossible for a previously upgraded unit to receive this bonus.
** This was slightly more or less (depending on how you look at it) pronounced in the earlier games, which did not have Civilization-specific units. Thus, your military typically consisted of something of an AnachronismStew.
* MegaCorp: You can found them in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion.
* AMillionIsAStatistic: Inherently, based on the nature of the game. In ''Civilization V'', this saying is read aloud when you reach the Modern Era.
* MillionMookMarch: Large standing armies come at a cost not building anything else ''and'' support costs and thus not all that viable for non-pure military. They suddenly do become viable as soon as you access to "flight" and build an airport in a dedicated military city. This allows you to instantly transport a unit as soon as it is completed to any of your cities (or allied cities if needed) while the production center may not have any buildings all that useful to build at that point in the game.
** "V" offers a few Policies that make a small army worthwhile, and the combat system generally favors small but high-tech units. However, you can have as many planes in the same city as you want, which invokes this trope if you happen to have enough oil or aluminium to support a large air force.
* MisplacedAccent: While having the civilization leaders speak their native languages in ''Civilization V'' was a nice touch, several people criticized some of their accents as historically inaccurate: Napoleon loses his Corsican accent, George Washington has a BillClinton-esque modern American accent rather than anything from the 18th century, and Catherine speaks perfect Russian despite being born as and raised by Germans.
* MsFanservice: Catherine the Great, Queen Isabella and a few others.. AND HOW!
** mind you, Catherine averted this on earlier games, being shown as some kind of GrandeDame or BigBeautifulWoman.
* MultipleEndings: Multiple win conditions, actually. The first two games had the warlike method (conquer every other civilization) or the peaceful method (send a spaceship to another planet). Later games introduced diplomatic, cultural, or domination-based victory conditions.
** Domination was taken out, and ''Revolution'' added Economic: Have 200,000 gold and build the World Bank wonder. Sadly this was not included in 5.
** The diplomatic victory has changed quite a bit. In ''IV'', it was about getting enough votes to become supreme leader (good luck doing this in a multiplayer game). In ''V'', it's mostly financial. City states make requests from time to time, and if conquered by another civ, you can liberate them to guarantee a vote from them, but in practice, most influence with city states is simply bought with gold, ''especially'' if other players are competing for diplomatic victory.
* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: When playing on the higher difficulty levels in ''Civ V'', the AI doesn't actually get smarter but instead relies on simply ignoring the game rules that limit the player's own success to do as it pleases.
** The main way of controlling the player's expansion is happiness. Playing on the Prince ("normal") difficulty, the AI only gets 60% of the unhappiness that the player does, and gets more happiness to start and an extra point of happiness for each luxury. This roughly translates to allowing an AI Civ to be twice as large as a human one with the same level of happiness, on normal, the difficulty where "The AI receives no particular bonuses".
** In earlier games, it would simply decide "now's a good time to instantly build a wonder". Nowadays, the cheating is mostly relegated to numbers; a lot of them.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Giant Death Robot.
** The [[OhCrap Dreadnought]] in Beyond the Sword.
* {{Narrator}}: In more recent games, they've had most of their descriptive text be read aloud, following in the footsteps of ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri''. Though in this case, they only have one person doing the job:
** LeonardNimoy in ''Civ IV''. Though Nimoy wasn't hired for the expansion packs, and their narration ends up quite jarring.
** W. Morgan Sheppard in ''Civ V''.
* NeutralNoLonger: In ''II'', a Spy planting a nuclear device causes all civilizations to go at war against the perpetrator. In ''V'', city-states become permanent enemies to a civilization which keeps attacking and conquering city states.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: In ''Revolution'', granting certain upgrades gives the unit a title, so you can wind up with unit called a "Ninja Samurai Knight Army." And it is just as awesome as the name would suggest.
* NoBloodForPhlebotinum: If you don't have a resource and can't get it through trade or peaceful expansion, the only options left are either do without it or resort to violence.
** Beyond the Sword introduced the "Greed" and "Corporate Expansion" quests, which codify this.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In ''Revolution'', the modern era diplomacy advisor is clearly modeled on Condoleeza Rice.
* NonEntityGeneral: Both played straight for the player's leader (although you can choose your leader from among all the available ones, AI players react to you the same way regardless), and averted by AI leaders, some of whom are much more trigger-happy than others (we're looking at you, Isabella), and all of whom have personalized and sometimes entertaining interactions. For instance, if [[strike:sufficiently offended]] presented with any deal she doesn't like, [[MyGirlIsASlut Catherine the Great]] may "slap" "the player", complete with StarTrekShake, while if your relations are good (heh heh) she may favor you with a flirtatious wink. Tick off Sumerian badass Gilgamesh, and he'll grab your throat, bring you up close for a DeathGlare, then hurl you back.
* NoSwastikas: The Third Reich is conspicuous in its near-total absence, although there is one quote from AdolfHitler for ''IV'''s Fascism tech, and Erwin Rommel is featured as a Great General in ''Warlords'' (though Rommel wasn't actually a Nazi). The strange people who yearn for Hitler's inclusion in the series tend to note that [[JosefStalin Stalin]] and [[MaoZedong Mao]], who were just as nasty if not quite as infamous, are playable leaders (though [[BannedInChina no country with paying customers will ban the game because of them]]).
** Because of this, one of the best-known player mods to ''II'' is the so-called "Fascism Patch", which, in addition to doing a great many other things (bugfixes, better-looking units and so on) replaces the Fundamentalism government type with Fascism and gives the player appropriate units including the Stormtrooper (elite infantry) and the Dive Bomber.
** And there's the WorldWarII scenario in ''II''; it has special AI so that in the first few turns the Axis and Allies will repeat events that happened in the real world, like the Axis occupying Holland.
** On the other hand, the only ''III'' built-in scenario dealing with World War II (in the ''Conquests'' expansion) was World War II in the Pacific.
** The "World War II: Road to War" mod included with ''Civ IV: Beyond the Sword'' solves this problem by including two versions of each scenario -- one with Hitler, and one in which he is replaced with Franz von Papen. The former is presumably taken out in countries where Nazi symbolism and direct references to the Third Reich are banned.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent:
** The intro movie for ''Civilization V'' has a Arabic Chieftain explaining a dream of world domination to his son. For some reason, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMW5-YXTKtY both speak with heavy English accents]]. Of course, since he dreams of his people being samurai, building the Great Pyramid, storming a castle, and being Norse invaders, the two are likely suppose to represent a generic vision of humanity rather than a specific civilization.
* NukeEm: Across all the games, nuclear weapons are by far the most devastating weapon it's possible to build (but see OneHitKill below). Using them, however, is something of a MoralEventHorizon as far as the game is concerned, causing all AI players to declare war with you automatically and leaving horrendous pollution behind, beginning a catastrophic period of GlobalWarming. Interestingly, in ''IV'' you can get the [[UnitedNations UN]] to sign a nonproliferation treaty banning the building (but not use) of nuclear weapons, and an advanced player can sometimes do this after building his own nukes, [[ManipulativeBastard leaving himself the sole nuclear armed power in the game]].
* OneHitKill: The Eco Ranger unit in ''Call To Power''. Don't let that brightly-painted Flower Power exterior fool you. What it kills, in one hit, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxBVc2cSFeI is a city]].
** That cutscene is inspired by, and [[TheJimmyHartVersion borrows the music from]], ''{{Akira}}''. That says everything you need to know right there.
** Its method of operation, on the other hand, is a [[{{Homage}} direct tribute]] to the [[StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Genesis Device]].
* OneHitPointWonder: All military units were this until ''Civilization II'', which introduced a HitPoints system to avert the "Spearman Beats Tank" problem. ''Civilization III'' simplified the combat system but reintroduced the problem. ''Civilization IV'' merged HitPoints and combat power into one figure, making DeathOfAThousandCuts a serious problem.
** "V" generally averts this but there are several situations where units become OHPWs (despite having 10 Hitpoints):
*** Any non-combat unit (Great People, Workers and Settlers) are instantly killed or captured if an enemy military unit moves onto their tile.
*** Any embarked unit is instantly killed by enemy naval units moving onto their tile, unless they have Defensive Embarkment.
*** Units stationed in towns are instantly killed if the town is captured or nuked.
*** Finally, Japan's cultural power is that damaged units do not lose combat prowess. There is even an achievement to be earned by sending a [[CriticalExistenceFailure 1-HP unit]] against an opposing unit and winning.
* OminousLatinChanting: [[ByzantineEmpire Justinian I's]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEVNDw90VyI diplomacy theme]], which is contrary to popular belief ''[[DanBrowned NOT]]'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9K_pe00F2o Deus Iudex Iustus]].
* OpeningNarration: In the first game, this was used to cover the LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading. In the fourth game, it was brought back as a tribute... And recited by LeonardNimoy! ''V'' has [[WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}} Xanatos' dad]] doing the opening narrations as well as the quotes for when you research something.
* OvertRendezvous: In the intro to ''Civilization IV'''s expansion, an image of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg address {{Match Cut}}s to his memorial, where two spies are passing along photos of Soviet missile sites.
* PathOfGreatestResistance: This is very useful to determine the point of origin of an enemy (Barbarian or Civilized) whose camp/cities you haven't found yet.
* PermanentElectedOfficial: You. Heck, not even ''TIME'' will free them from your rule.
* PleaseSelectNewCityName: The TropeNamer.
* ThePowerOfRock: Rock 'N Roll is a constructable Wonder of the World in ''Civ IV''. It even plays TheVelvetUnderground's "Rock and Roll" during the movie. Thanks to the TechTree, it usually gets finished around the same time a Diplomatic Victory becomes possible. Since building it allows you to export "Hit Singles," you can build global good will by giving them away for free right before elections are held, thereby literally winning the game via ThePowerOfRock.
* {{Privateer}}
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Some leaders act this way in the dialogue, although their behaviour towards you may not be that honorable.
* PuppetState:
** In one of the Expansion Packs for ''Civilization IV'', any sufficiently powerful civ can make any sufficiently weak civ into their vassal state. If the vassal grows powerful enough (there are exact numbers), it can regain independence.
** In Civ 5, you can't make an entire civ into one, but when you conquer an enemy city you have the option between annexing it (which simply makes it on of your civ's cities, but generates a lot of unhappiness until a courthouse is built) or making it a puppet (which gives all the science, culture, and gold it generates to your civ, but you cannot control its production, for either buildings or units).
*** Puppeted towns are also automatically set to focus on gold production, making them fairly useless for any other purpose.
* RandomEvent: Introduced in the ''Civilization IV'' expansions. A lot of them are just random things that affect improvements and tile output (mine collapses, tornados, striking a deposit of jade), while others can change your relationship with your neighbors, such as a politically-arranged marriage collapsing or a high-ranking intelligence agent defecting. Other Random Events depend on your government, such as your hereditary dynasty dying out or [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything an election being too close to call and being settled by the courts]], giving you an incentive to try out as many Civic combinations as possible.
** ''Civilization V'' uses this for city state requests. Especially when they ask for a certain resource or want another city state eliminated.
* RandomlyGeneratedLevels
* RedshirtArmy: "Nationhood" allows you to draft military units, but they are less effective than ones built the normal way and cost population.
* RockBeatsLaser: Due to the behind-the-scenes dice rolls, you can have some truly bizarre outcomes, like the common meme among fans of a spearman beating a tank. Each game after the first altered the combat equations in various ways without actually removing the problem. Fundamentally, it's about units having attack and (in some versions) defense values that fail to take into account basic concepts like range. Therefore, the RandomNumberGod will eventually allow the spearman to get lucky.
** With the right combination of bonuses, it doesn't even need to be a lucky roll. In Civ II, a veteran phalanx (+50% strength) in a mountain-top (x3 defence) city, with walls (x3 defence) would win more often than lose against anything less than a tank.
** Further, there are some "auto win" situations, as in ''Civilization IV'' where ships and aircraft in base/port are automatically destroyed when a land unit occupies their square. Yes, this means you can take out a squadron of stealth fighters and a fleet of battleships with a club-wielding warrior (presumably they bash them into nothing while on the ground/port).
*** Civilization V does this on water. Any embarked land unit can be instantly killed by any ship moving on them.
*** In Civ IV, on the lower difficulties, you are guaranteed to win your first encounters with barbarians. If you haven't used up these "free wins", you can create a barbarian modern armour with WorldBuilder and your warrior will defeat it.
* RuleOfCool: In the introduction video to Civ 5, the {{Narrator}} is sitting at a campfire. In a tent. During the day.
* SandIsWater, TheSkyIsAnOcean, SpaceIsAnOcean, LavaIsBoilingKoolAid: Many game mods substitute different types of terrain for oceans. For example, the Test of Time fantasy cloud world has sky, the Sci-fi orbital map has space, and a {{Dune}} based mod uses sand for the "ocean" terrain, while using, respectively, clouds, orbital platforms, and rocky terrain as "land".
* SaveScumming: Across all the games, it's disturbingly easy to abuse the save feature to get favorable battle outcomes or avoid negative randomly generated events. Some versions try to prevent this by saving the random number generator's seed along with the game, so you get the exact same outcomes after a reload unless you do things in a different order. This option can be turned off, however.
* SchizoTech: A particularly skilled player can roll over his spear-equipped enemies with legions of tanks. (Well, all except That One Unit...)
** This is pretty much bound to happen in any game where one player runs away with the science race, especially in ''Call To Power''. Screw tanks against spearmen - it's far more satisfying to send giant, missile-equipped robots after them. Or, go for the ultimate insult and use a space bomber to vaporize them.
** This problem was noticeably worse before the concept of technological eras was further developed in ''Civilization III''. In the first two games, one could climb disturbingly far up just one or two branches of the tech tree before finally having to go back and research, say, The Wheel.
** In ''II'' and earlier, you didn't necessarily even have to go back and research it. You could trade for techs without having all the prerequisites for them, so if you had all the follow-on techs, and didn't need the specific units or abilities that a particular tech gave you (chariots, in the case of The Wheel in ''II''), you could ignore it completely. Which could lead to hilarious exchanges with AI civs: "We notice that your puny civilization hasn't even discovered The Wheel. We'll gladly give it to you in exchange for the secret of the [[TankGoodness Automobile]]."
* SeparateButIdentical: In full force in the first two games. Installments after ''III'' moved away from this by giving unique units and buildings to each civilization and different traits to each leader, but all civs still draw from the same TechTree (with all that that implies).
* ShoutOut: Many.
** The picture for "The Internet" world wonder is Al Gore.
** Some of the leaders' quotes are movie references ([[Film/DieHard "Now I have a machinegunner. Ho ho ho."]]).
** Every game is guaranteed to contain at least one reference to [[ElvisPresley the king]].
** ''III'' will ask for confirmation when you change government types: "[[TheBeatles You say you want a revolution?]]" Your choices are "you know it's gonna be alright," and "you can count me out!"
** If another leader in ''IV'' is pleased with a trade, they may respond with "Did I ever tell you that you're my hero? You're everything I wish that I could be." Or, "You are the wind beneath my wings, <player>!".
** Also in ''IV'', if you've been at war with someone else for a while, one of the "War Weariness" descriptions is "WAR... What is it good for? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!"
** In ''V'' the music for the Helsinki city-state is "Ievan Polkka" by Loituma, a Finnish song best known from the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wnE4vF9CQ4 Leek Spin]] meme.
** The [[CosmeticAward achievements]] for ''Civilization V'' are almost entirely [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]]. [[DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog "The World Is a Mess, and I Just Need to Rule It"]], [[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined "Ruler of the Twelve Colonies"]], [[Series/DoctorWho "Exterminate! Exterminate!"]]...the list goes on. [[{{Pokemon}} And on.]] [[StarTrek And on.]] [[DaftPunk And on.]] [[TheLonelyIsland And on.]] [[{{Lolcats}} And on.]] [[BackToTheFuture And on.]] [[AltumVidetur And on.]] [[OverlyLongGag And on.]] [[http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationv/achievements.html Here's]] a list.
** In the expert lumberjack's Civilopedia entry for the ''Colonization'' expansion, it states that "[[MontyPythonsFlyingCircus they were lumberjacks and they're OK.]]"
* ShownTheirWork: ''Rhye's and Fall of Civilization'', a historical simulator for ''the entire world'', is ridiculously detailed, with pretty much every tile named after a city that really exists there, and they change according to the controlling Civ. It's a GameMod, not something made by the developers, although one that usually gets included as a bonus in expansion packs for the game.
* SlidingScaleOfTurnRealism: Round by Round.
* SpaceIsNoisy: Averted in ''IV''. If you pull the camera back far enough to show the entire planet, the sound and music fade away to silence.
* StandardSnippet: ''AlsoSprachZarathustra'' is played when you win ''II'' by launching a spaceship.
* StealthPun:
** In ''Civilization Revolution'', the advance that makes the great person Leopold Stokowski more likely to appear is Superconductor.
** In Civ IV, JuliusCaesar's greeting to you when you first meet him is "Welcome to Rome, <player>. Care for some salad? I made it myself."
** The Tech quote for "Machinery" in ''IV'' is "[[DeusExMachina A god from the machine]]"
* SuspiciouslySmallArmy: A "unit" can be anything from one ship or aircraft to 10 soldiers, depending on the game.
* SweetPollyOliver: In ''Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword'' the ordinary spy at earlier ages is a woman disguised as a shepherd with a fake beard. When the age advances she drops the act and dons a SpyCatsuit.
* SymbologyResearchFailure: The Kremlin world wonder... [[RunningGag is actually]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral St. Basil's Cathedral]]. By ''V'', this has become a running gag since the wonder portrait that pops up when you build the Kremlin depicts the actual Kremlin, while the wonder still looks like a cathedral on the world map.
* TakeThat: After your score is computed, it shows where you rank among a list of historical leaders. At the top are people like [[EmperorAugustus Augustus Caesar]], AbrahamLincoln, Hammurabi, Charlemagne, and WinstonChurchill. At the very bottom? DanQuayle. Quayle's "the future will be better tomorrow" quote is also read by Nimoy in ''IV'' when you research your first Future Tech.
* TechTree: Generally containing upwards of 80 technologies. Of course, it does take 6,000 years to climb to the top of it.
* TheThemeParkVersion: ''Revolution'' is definitely the "kiddie introductory Civilization game." Not that it's bad, per se, but it's very simplified and over-exaggerated, especially in art style and presentation.
* ThisIsGonnaSuck: Deity difficulty in ''Civilization IV''. "Muahahahaha! Good luck, sucker!"
* TooDumbToLive: The AI is fond of insulting your "puny little empire" even if you own half the world and are poised to run over them with a legion of tanks. "Now I have a warrior! Ho ho ho!"
** Sometimes the AI will still treat you like that after getting their ass handed to them in a previous war. Including eventually declaring war on you again and losing just as badly.
** Even better, sometimes the AI will ''declare war on you'' from that state, only to dash their army to pieces against your technological superiority. At this point they frantically sue for peace, bribing you with gold, resources and even cities. [[AttackAttackRetreatRetreat To end a war that they started]].
** In Civ V, if the computer believes it has the upper hand in a war through some nebulous logic that apparently reaches this concussion even if you are rapidly blitzkrieging through their cities, it will offer you a peace treaty in exchange of essentially everything you own (money, resources, cities) except for your capital. To end a war ''you are winning''. Perhaps it’s betting on your hand twitching and clicking Accept by accident.
* UngratefulBastard: Tokugawa is a strict isolationist, and it takes ''ridiculous'' amounts of bribery to get him to even open his borders. If Japan is one of the rival empires in 4, you should probably just consider them an enemy and forget diplomatic measures - it's a lot cheaper.
* UnreliableNarrator: The Civilopedia in 4 claims under "Police State" credits it with helping Stalin not lose World War 2, while Stalin's entry says only Russia's sheer size and winter prevented a quick loss. (Of course, would you expect any less [[{{Doublethink}} from Stalin?]])
* UnstableEquilibrium: Present in all ''Civilization'' games. An empire that manages to secure good territory early on can research faster and produce more units, making it easier for them to expand even further. The endgame is typically resolved between two or three strong empires while the weaker ones have already been wiped out or reduced to barely influential lapdogs with practically zero chance of winning.
* UselessUsefulSkill: Some of the Civics in ''Civ IV'' were notorious for being worthless -- most notably Environmentalism, which granted a bonus for a resource (forests and jungles) that you'd more than likely eradicated by the time you became able to use it. Environmetalism became ''far'' more powerful in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion.
* VideoGameCaringPotential: [[HundredPercentAdorationRating "We Love The King Day celebrated in <city name>."]]
** It's a part of gameplay for ''V''; a City will require a certain resource and if you can get the required resource the local populace start getting busy.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Poison your neighbors' water supplies! Bomb farmlands and cause the starving deaths of millions! [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWzMeLdU6FA Nuke Gandhi!]]
** ''[[TheDogShotFirst Gandhi nuked me first!]]''
*** That Gandhi can be a real bastard sometimes.
*** "Gandhi is a notorious liar and cheat! Deal with him carefully!"
*** This actually makes a comeback in ''Civilization V.''
** In addition to allowing (read: encouraging) you to use slavery, Civilization also entices you to wipe out entire nations. If you manage to subjugate or genocide every race but your own, the game declares you a winner.
* VariablePlayerGoals: Any civilization can achieve any of the win conditions, but some civs have particular traits that make achieving certain goals easier than others.
* VastBureaucracy: Different games have found different ways to represent this:
** The first three games had a corruption mechanic which affected individual cities, affected by government type, empire size, and the particular city's distance from the capital. This is supposed to represent a sprawling empire's tendency to be plagued by expensive red tape, inefficiency, and graft.
** The fourth replaces the corruption mechanic with city maintenance costs and Civics upkeep, largely representing the same thing. There's also a Bureaucracy Civic, which provides a significant boost to your civ's capital (and no other city at all).
** The fifth just gave up and made everything global; the empire ''itself'' is the basic unit of measure, instead of individual cities:
*** If you build a Colosseum, it adds +X smileys to your ''empire's'' Happiness total. This makes war a lot easier, since it eliminates the catch-22 of newly-conquered citizens who are too furious to build things that would [[BuffySpeak un-furiize]] them. However, it does cause some FridgeLogic when you realize that angry citizens in newly-conquered (say) Shanghai are being pacified by the goings-on of a theater in New York.
*** On the other hand, other mechanics, particularly Culture, slant the game towards empires with a small number of well-developed cities. The more towns you have, the more Culture points each new policy requires; this slows down anyone who's going for a Culture Victory or who just wants the bonuses policies provide. Plus, the AI will get hostile if you encroach on (what they perceive to be) their territory.
* VideoGameTime: The years pass by in a strange way in ''Civilization'': In the beginning, a turn ranges from 50 years to a couple of centuries, depending on the game speed, but slows down as the years go by. Even in later ages, unit speeds are ridiculously slow (a year to fly from one city to another!). However, it's an AcceptableBreakFromReality in a game of this scope. To give you an idea, you can have a unit of cavalry serving you for over 2000 years.
* WarElephants: In ''Civ II'', they become available when you discover Polytheism, for some reason. In ''Civ III'', they're India's special unit, replacing knights. In ''Civ IV'', they become available when you discover Construction, but you also need access to Ivory.
** Two separate versions show up as special units in ''Civ V''; the standard War Elephant replacing the Chariot Archer for India and Naresuan's Elephant replacing Siam's Knight.
* WeWillHavePerfectHealthInTheFuture: One of the wonders in ''Call To Power'' is an immunity chip.
** In ''Civ III'' and ''Civ IV'', every Future Tech increases the civilization's health and happiness. If you get enough Future Tech your citizens will have perfect health and a massive grin.
* WarForFunAndProfit: Something that the A.I. civilizations invoke in ''Civ V''. They will declare war against another civilization that they have military parity with, then rather than pour all their resources into beating down that civ, they will just fight it to a stalemate. After getting bored of this, it will then propose a peace treaty, with terms highly favorable to themselves and costly to the other civilization. In doing so, it gets to loose some of the military units it has been paying maintenance on, and get some nice access to luxury and strategic resources, and a fair amount of money to boot.
** This can even happen without any enemy unit ever entering your borders.
* WaterSourceTampering: Poisoning a city's water supply is a potential espionage action in ''Civilization II''. Succeeding reduces the city's population.
** It's also possible in ''Civilization IV'', and pulling it off slaps them with a massive health penalty for a time.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome:
** The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__29A8qWkrc Opening Menu for Civlization IV: Warlords]], which is a Lebanese folk song called "Al Nadda". It sounds pretty {{Badass}}, right?. [[http://www.shira.net/music/lyrics/a-nada.htm Well, it's a]] ''LOVE SONG''[[hottip:* :Of course, with lyrics like "And if they refuse to give you to me, I will tear down the high mountains", the awesomeness of this song is probably justified]]!
** Note that "Baba Yetu," which (as mentioned above) is considered the new leitmotif of the series, is actually an adaptation of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili.
*** [[FridgeBrilliance Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty good fit for a game called Civilization.]]
** The Greek theme, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kpVrmRkPWk Epitaph of Seikilos,]] is the single oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition from anywhere in the world and is roughly 2000 years old. The song was found carved on a tombstone by Seikilos to his (presumed) wife Euterpe. For a more accurate version, try [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xERitvFYpAk here.]]
* WhatTheHellPlayer: Try to perform certain illegal actions in the game, and you'll get some smart-aleck game notifications.
** For ''Civilization II'':
*** Trying to build a city at sea:
---->"It may surprise you to learn that cities cannot be built at sea."
*** Trying to airlift naval units:
---->"Ships cannot be airlifted, silly."
** In a slightly more serious vein, in ''Civilization V'' you get this reaction from other civilizations (and City-States) if you're too aggressive towards City-States. This wouldn't be as big a deal if it wasn't for the ''complete lack of a way to repair your reputation'' once a City-State declares war on you. They decide you're a jerk, and that's the end of it.
*** There's a single, roundabout way to repair your rep. Example: Venice is at Permanent War with you. Venice gets conquered by another civ (say, by India). Then, when you swoop in with your Giant Death Robot and kick that bastard Ghandi out of Venice, you'll be given the option (alongside the normal options of "Annex" and "Create Puppet State") to "Liberate the City." This not only returns Venice back to being a sovereign city-state, but they'll be so grateful to be rid of Ghandi's tyrannical rule that your new relationship with Venice starts with the Allied bar heavily in the blue.
*** Note though one can make peace before this stage. It's only once a City-State has declared permanent war that relationships break down completely. It's usually justified though as it takes either intentionally going out and bullying City-States or a super-power manipulating them into going to war with you.
* WholePlotReference: Many scenarios reference the plots of other works:
** ''Beyond the Sword'''s "Next War" is basically ''[[NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' with another state added for balance.
** ''Call to Power 2'''s "Nuclear Detente" is the StarTrekTheOriginalSeries episode [[http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon_(episode) A Taste of Armageddon]] [[AC:[[InSpace on a planet]]]], complete with names.
** Another ''[=CtP2=]'' RPG-like scenario essentially follows TheMagnificentSevenSamurai plot.
* WorkerUnit: Workers and settlers.
* WriterOnBoard: Some of the Civics descriptions in ''Civilization IV'' are a bit ... odd. The one for Pacifism basically denounces it as hypocrisy. [[DemocracyIsBad And guess what the one about Universal suffrage says]].
** They all attempt to list the pros and cons of each civic. Even slavery has its advantages. Interestingly, they couldn't think of anything good to say about the caste system.
* YouKeepUsingThatWord: "Factoid" is used the way the word "fact" would be in Civ 5's Civilopedia.
* YouFailHistoryForever:
** One Civilopedia entry infamously described Julius Caesar as being the "first emperor of Rome." That was actually his adopted son Augustus; Julius himself was never anything more than dictator for life.
** The Civilopedia entries for marines and ironclads imply they were both American inventions.
** The Pikeman unit in ''Civilization V'' wields a halberd, not a pike.
*** Although historically, halberds were often wielded in pikeman formations.
** In ''Civilization 4'' and ''Revolution'', Saladin is the leader of Arabia. In [[RealLife Real Life]], Saladin was a Kurd (born in what is now Iraq) who ruled most of the Arab world... from Egypt (itself a conquest of his, in a way).
** ''Civilization 5's'' quote for Advanced Ballistics. Who the hell is [[TomLehrer Tom Hehrer]]?
** In Civilization IV, [[CyrusTheGreat Cyrus]] and Darius look quite different, while they were directly related in real life.
* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: Zeppelins are unlocked by the late-mid-game tech "physics", while heavier than air ships are unlocked latter via "flight" tech (not ''that'' far after physics, but some turns worth). Depending on the games tech progress, these might not go out of style for a long time. Unit wise, Airships can only bomb ground and sea units for a bit of damage, which is helpful given how strong garrisoned units can be, though it's not much damage (only able to reduce them to 80% of their max HP), and have no counters (short of taking the city they are based in) before "flight" (and if only ''you'' have that...).
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''Just... one... more... edit!'' *click*
[[caption-width-right:319:[-Y'know, [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer if Gandhi were really pissed off]]-].]]
->''"I have discovered. I have led. I have conquered. I have inspired. I have [[OnceAnEpisode built a civilization to stand the test of time]]. What will your civilization stand for?"''
--> -- '''''Civilization V'' trailer'''
{{Civilization}} is a popular [[FourX "4X"]] game developed by SidMeier. The original game was developed in 1991, and there have been four [[NumberedSequels direct sequels]] ([[MissionPackSequel all of which are sequentially improved refinements and updates on the basic concept]]), numerous expansion packs, and many spin-offs (''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', ''{{Colonization}}'', ''[[InNameOnly Civilization: Call To Power]]''), as well as the much simplified ''Civilization Revolution'' for home consoles, the NintendoDS and [=iPhone=], and ''Civ World'' for {{Facebook}}. The game was originally inspired by a {{Board Game|s}}, and has since [[RecursiveAdaptation spawned two others]]. Many polls and lists of the best computer games ever developed have, at various times, listed several of the games in the series, often at #1.
The general concept is that the player controls a civilization from the stone age through the present day into the space age. The first installments gave you two ways to win: conquering everyone, or [[SidMeiersAlphaCentauri sending a colony to Alpha Centauri]]. Later, three more conditions were added: get elected leader of the world by the UnitedNations, controlling a dominant chunk of the planet (which kind of obsoletes the "conquer everyone" goal, which is probably why it was removed again later), or create a culture so influential that it engulfs everyone else's.
All aspects of the civilization are under the control of [[NonEntityGeneral the player]], including exploration, [[TechTree technological advancement]], expansion, material production, culture, religion, military development and deployment, foreign negotiations, and trade. The world was viewed from a 3/4 perspective until ''IV'' let you zoom in/out and move the camera around. The game's open-ended play, and the multiple settings (involving world size, terrain, opposing civilizations, multiple victory scenarios, game play speed and difficulty) mean that every game can be different from the previous one.
It is (in)famous for leading to gameplay sessions that extend well past the player's original self-imposed deadline. [[http://www.civanon.org/home.shtml So much, a joke 'Civilization Anonymous' website was made.]]
"Baba Yetu", the menu music from ''Civilization IV'' [[hottip:*:Technically, the re-arrangement of the piece for the album "Calling All Dawns."]] became the first song from a video game to ever win a Grammy Award, which hopefully will spur the Grammy Awards into including an award for "interactive fiction" music scores and songs.
----
!!This game presents examples of the following tropes:
* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Many, as a game which truly approximated all the headaches of running an Empire would only be interesting to professors and megalomaniacs.
* AintTooProudToBeg: In ''Civ V'' leaders that are losing a war tend to offer peace agreements in exchange for every city but their capital, all their resources for 30 turns, all their income for 30 turns, their entire treasury, and their wives and daughters as your concubines (well, OK, not that last one). Oh, and guess how hard it'll be to take that lone capital once the 30 turns are over. They do it to other AIs too, so the number of powerful nations on any given continent can drop quite quickly.
** On the flip side, some leaders ''will'' ask for peace, but only if ''you'' give all your money and loads of strategic and luxury resources, [[TooDumbToLive even if you are steamrolling across the empire]].
** Likewise, the minute you get two sources of a luxury in ''Civ5'', a bunch of other leaders will offer you a Declaration of Friendship. Their sole motivation is to ask you to loan them that second luxury source for free. (A canny player will turn down the Declaration itself, as accepting Friendship but then denying a request is a hit to your reputation.)
* TheAllSeeingAI: Used completely straight in earlier versions. Mostly averted in ''Civilization IV'', except that the AI negotiators know precisely what the relative values of various goods are, leading to weirdness such as knowing the value of trading world maps when they shouldn't know what's on yours.
* AnachronismStew: Somewhat unavoidable in a freeform game that features a myriad of historical civilizations, many of whom never existed in the same time/place as one another. Add religions and government styles to the mix and you have a recipe for oddness.
** One of the oddest examples of this is the ''Oxford University'' National Wonder in ''Civ IV''. The significance of Oxford, and the reason it's one of the world's leading establishments today is that it was the first University set up in the world (at least in any format we'd vaguely recognise today). However, in the game, you need to have built at least 6 other Universities to construct it...
** The tech tree, at least in ''Civ IV'', is however set up to make a ''few'' things happen "on time" in a normal game. Christianity is typically created around 30 AD and a Civilization will get the tech to find the new world (on a map type that supports it) around 1500 AD and to colonize it a few turns later. Nothing flat out ''stops'' you from progressing to these points earlier if you are devoted or get lucky with a great person though.
%% No specific examples, please. We get it.
** AnachronismStew + BornInTheWrongCentury (and perhaps GenderFlip) = HilarityEnsues. Because of how the system randomly selects names for great people it usually ends up with [[HilariousInHindsight some truly bizarre results]]. For example Jean De Arc, born in 500BC and goes off to found Judaism or even worse Mohammad, born in 5BC goes off to found Christianity.
* AndThatsTerrible: The Civilopedia avoids calling any civic option immoral or good. It rightfully points out a few are really impractical and unworkable, but never immoral. Things like "Police State" and "State Property" are given weights of their benefits and negatives, but no discussion of their morality -- '''except''' "Slavery" and "Emancipation", which are described as being of "basic moral repugnance" and a "somewhat utopian society" respectively.
** "Slavery" and "Emancipation" get the pros and cons treatment as well.
* AndYourRewardIsInteriorDecorating
* ArcWords: "Test of time."
* ArmyOfLawyers: In ''Call to Power'' and its sequel, once you develop to the Modern Era, you can ''literally'' train Lawyers and Corporate Branches to wage economic warfare on your enemies.
* ArmyOfTheAges: the theme for Civilization IV: Warlord's box art.
** And of course you and your enemies' armies could become this as well if you don't bother upgrading your units.
* ArtificialStupidity: So much over the various installments that all the examples were moved to the trope page.
* AscendedFanboy: Aside from the first game, all the following games have been designed by people other than Sid who has generally only acted as an overwatching executive producer. Most notable in ''Civilization V'' in which the lead designer came from the modding community and is only around 25 years old.
* AscendedMeme: ''Civilization V'' has three: at the end of the tech tree are Giant Death Robots, a long running joke on several fansites; using a Great Artist to make borders expand is now explicitly named a "Culture Bomb", which was a FanNickname for the process in ''Civ IV''; and [[MahatmaGandhi Gandhi]]'s AI is tailored to put all his resources to building nukes.[[hottip:*:They must have been thinking about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi a different Gandhi]].]]
** Also, the option to continue playing a game after you won or lost is labeled "Just...one...more...turn")
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Averted with Great Generals (and the mongol equivalent the Khan), who are {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s whose only offensive capability is to make other units stronger. But to be fair, the Great General is just one guy while the regular units presumably represent regiments (give or take depending on the era).
* AwesomeButImpractical: The Internet wonder from ''Civilization IV'' grants you any tech known by two other civilizations. This would be awesome but for the fact that it's at the very end of the tech tree for most players, meaning that either it'll be built after it's needed or the AI will get it first. However, there is a specific strategy that ignores all other endgame tech to get the Internet built early, making it actually useful.
** In ''Civilization II'', the Great Library wonder did the same thing, about 100 turns into the match, if you aimed straight for it, making it a potential GameBreaker until it was made obsolete by later tech.
** The Space Elevator in Civilization IV gives you a big boost to spaceship construction. Problem with it is that it's so frequently so expensive and requires a tech not needed for the spaceship that you're usually better off building another spaceship part in its place.
** The Great Colossus wonder in Civilization V used to be this. It had a nice benefit, but was lost once a certain, rather early, technology was discovered by any player. It was later patched to have a slightly different effect and not become obsolete.
** The [[AscendedMeme Giant Death Robot]] in V comes so late that anyone aiming for a domination victory will probably get it before having an opportunity to build the GDR. It also requires uranium which could be used on the earlier and quicker-to-build nuclear options.
*** On the other hand, you can only use a nuke once, whereas a GDR will keep going and going and going... In fact a handful of them can win you the entire map if used judiciously and with air support.
* {{BFS}}:
** A majority of leaders in ''Civilization V'' carry swords with them when you meet them for diplomacy, but special mention must go to Askia and OdaNobunaga. Askia carries an impressive-looking two-handed broadsword, and Nobunaga carries three giant katanas!
** On the unit side of the scale, broadswordsmen fall on this category.
* BigBrotherIsWatching: Two wonders from ''Call to Power'', [[GovernmentAgencyOfFiction The Agency]] and the [[MasterComputer AI Entity]]. The AI Entity in particular is [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel terrifying]]--[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPuU8Pq9D3Q&NR=1 see for yourself]], but the Agency [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-GymYlnV2I&NR=1 doesn't lack for disturbing]], either.
* BloodKnight: There are certain rulers who seem to really, ''really'' enjoy war. If you find yourself on a map with Queen Isabella of Spain, Shaka Zulu, or Montezuma of the Aztecs, expect them to attack you at some point, even if they have [[ArtificialStupidity absolutely no chance of victory]], and ''especially'' if they don't share your religion.
** Somewhat justified with Montezuma in ''Civilization V'', as his trait is to generate culture by killing enemy units.
* BlowGun: In ''Revolution'', one of the barbarian tribes you can encounter has a spokesman who threatens you with a blow gun.
* BreakingTheFourthWall: On rare occasions, when declaring war, Alexander the Great will look the player in the eye and ask, "You didn't really think I was going for a cultural victory, did you?" Hannibal does this too sometimes.
** Some of the reasons why another Civ isn't on good terms with you dip into this. From Civilization V: "They think we are trying to win the game in a manner similar to theirs, and they don't like it."
** In IV, the AI will never trade away any techs required to build spaceship parts, because "we'd rather win the game, thank you very much."
* {{Cap}}: As of ''Civilization V'', [[YouRequireMoreVespeneGas strategic resources]] work this way. However, it doesn't drain your existing stockpiles, it just determines ''how many'' of a thing you can have at once—for instance, if you have only four herds of horses, that's how many Horse Archers you can own simultaneously. This is not a great compromise, but it's way better than both ''Civilization III'', when resources would run out at [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard the most inconvenient time possible]], and every other game, where they never ran out at all.
** The implementation of resources in ''Civ 3'' didn't help with this. What you may expect is a Cap on how much the resource can be used before it disappears, and that, annoyingly, there's no counter for how much longer it will last. Actually, there is no Cap at all; each resource just has a small % chance of disappearing ''every'' turn, even if you just started using them last turn.
* CartoonBomb: Used by Grenadiers in ''Civilization IV''. Seeing as {{Cartoon Bomb}}s are modeled after early cast-iron, black-powder grenades, this is [[JustifiedTrope not surprising]].
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[CatherineTheGreat Catherine]] in ''Civilization IV'' has a unique aspect programed into her AI that she is the ''only'' leader willing to attack a friendly if the player bribes her.
** Fairly common in "Civilization V", and recently the dialogue was updated to show when the AI does it. Once you´ve been at war with a player, you can expect it to happen again just after the peace treaty expires, even if they´ve been acting friendly and forgiving. And if you liberate a capital for a defeated AI, they will often denounce you just a few turns later... although they are still forced to vote for you in an UN Vote.
** Some [=AIs=] will take you to war several times, negotiate peace, and go [[BlatantLies right back to being friendly again]].
** Really, take it as a rule: If the AI thinks you're too weak to defend yourself ([[ArtificialStupidity and even when you really aren't]]), you ''will'' be attacked.
** Sometimes when they act friendly, you might think they're actually friendly, because you've gone out of your to keep them satisfied with you, but behind the scenes they're angry at you for reasons you can't predict, like the famous "they think you're trying to win in a manner similar to them, and they don't like it!"
* ChewingTheScenery: Arguably some quotes in Civ 5. "A horse! A horse! My[[{{Beat}} ...]] '''KINGDOM''' for a horse!"
* ChurchMilitant: Your chosen faith under Theocracy.
* ComicBookTime: In addition to an extreme case of VideoGameTime (it's possible for a battle's outcome to change due to a forest suddenly growing around the defenders), named characters (civilization leaders and Great People) are immortal, and change appearance to suit the era. Also, in the Civ II "thingy" Test Of Time, you may notice that in extended original the time changes from 100s of years to singular over the course of 3000 B.C. to 1900 A.D. Makes you worry that it takes 1000 years to build A BARRACKS early game where a CITY in the late game takes only a few YEARS TO SET UP. EVERY. LAST. BUILDING. Worrying.
* ACommanderIsYou: Starting with ''Civilization III'', each faction can be loosely mapped to one or more of the Gimmick options, although some also fit the Spammer or Brute Force options - but see also SeparateButIdentical.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: This game has an entire folder on the trope page.
* TheComputerIsYourFriend: The [[MasterComputer AI Entity]] in ''Call To Power'' allows you to run your civilization with absolute efficiency... until it [[AIIsACrapshoot rebels against you]].
* TheComputerShallTauntYou: If another civilization considers itself superior to you, they'll let you know it, and they can be quite smug and condescending.
* CosmeticAward: Improving your palace in the original Civilization, your throne room in Civilization II. and your castle in Civilization III was awesome, but had no impact on gameplay.
* TheCoverChangesTheMeaning: In ''Civilization V'', every leader has a theme based on a well known folk tune from his or her respective culture ("America The Beautiful" for Washington, "I Vow To Thee My Country" for ElizabethI, etc.) There are two arrangements for each tune - one for when you are at peace with the civ and one for wartime. The wartime tunes often change a decidedly pleasant and uplifting tune into something sinister.
* CreatorCameo: Sid himself appears in every game as an advisor.
* CriticalExistenceFailure: Mostly played straight, but some versions of the game avert this by reducing the movement points and combat power of heavily damaged units. In ''Civilization V'', which averts it for most civs, it's actually the Japanese's unique perk -- their units don't get reduced stats for being damaged.
* CurbStompBattle: Alarmingly common in ''Civilization V'', from tearing through a undamaged city with a [[HumongousMecha Giant Death Robot]] or to seemingly exaggerated and extreme cases of bringing down an Enemy Empire with five [[TankGoodness Modern Armor units]].
* CutScene: The Wonders get them. In ''Civilization II'' these [[FullMotionVideo were made of]] StockFootage, later games have renders.
* DamageOverTime: In ''Civilization II'', helicopters received minor damage for every turn they spent in midair -- this was intended to simulate their limited fuel reserves without requiring them to return to base every time. Later ''Civ'' games removed this.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: In ''Civilization IV'', due to how reduced HitPoints also reduce combat strength, it is relatively common for two or three low tech units to gang up on and defeat high tech units. This, however, is arguably superior to previous versions in which [[OneHitPointWonder a single die roll]] determined the outcome of each battle. In ''Civilization II'', the hit point system allowed units to be overwhelmed by enough less powerful ones, though the resource costs would usually make doing this an impractical option. City sieges would also sometimes turn into this, due to the high defense bonuses of city wall type improvements.
** In ''V'', every unit has 10 hit points. A stronger unit will lose less HP and inflict more, but every encounter between two melee units will take at least 1 HP from both units involved. Ranged attacks also do at least 1 HP of damage, and they don't injure the attacker. Long story short, five ancient-era archers with the "logistics" promotion (which allows them to attack twice) are guaranteed to take down even the Giant Death Robot if they attack first.
* DeadpanSnarker: ''Civilization V'''s Civilopedia [[LampshadeHanging points out]] some of the more complicated and absurd parts of history that it goes over for certain entries, and is by no means above poking more fun at them if it feels warranted.
* DemotedToExtra: Brennus and the Celts are demoted from a playable faction in ''4'' to being AI-only barbarians in ''Revolution.''
* DevelopmentGag: The screen names of Beta testers appear as Great Spies (probably because there aren't many historical great spies whose names we actually know -- [[DontExplainTheJoke because then they wouldn't be very good spies.]])
* DiagonalSpeedBoost: In every game up to ''Civilization V'', which is played on hex tiles.
* EasyModeMockery: The game compares you to a famous (or infamous) world leader after it ends. On easy mode, you can beat the AI by a mile and still get compared to "WarrenGHarding," or worse, "DanQuayle." See TakeThat.
* EarlyBirdCameo: In Civ V, Harald Bluetooth and the Denmark faction are available as a DLC faction, but interestingly glimpses of a Viking-type faction can be seen in the opening cinematics.
* EasyCommunication: All of your soldiers and cities can be instantly ordered to do anything, even in the ages before radio. ''Possibly'' justified by having turns take much longer in earlier eras.
* EasyLogistics: Troops can "heal" (replenish their numbers) regardless of how far away they are from your civilization, and Civ 5 takes this a step further with the "instant heal" promotion. Incidentally, the same game has a Logistics promotion, which allows ranged siege units to attack twice in one turn.
* ElvisLives: The King usually stops by for a cameo in each game.
* EncyclopediaExposita: The Civilopedia, which contains just about everything you need to know about the game's structures, units, technologies, terrain and resources, with a smattering of Actual History scattered throughout.
* EveryoneMeetsEveryone: Normally the main action in the beginning of the game.
* EveryoneIsBi: Leaders who flirt with the player at high relation do so regardless of the gender of the leader selected by the player. Catherine the Great in ''Civilization IV'' is particularly notorious.
--> '''Catherine''' ''We were defeated, so this makes me your slave. [[FetishFuel I suppose there are worse fates]].''
* EverythingsWorseWithBears: Bears are the greatest menace to early explorers in ''Civilization IV''... at least until the roving barbarians get their hands on [[ItGotWorse bronze weaponry]].
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The aforementioned Giant Death Robot. Yes, that's the official name.
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: A lot of the diplomacy actions in ''Civilization IV'' lean in this direction, as you'll be presented with a request that will inevitably make either the requester or a third party angry. Next turn, that other party will make a similar demand in reverse. The price of neutrality (if you don't ''want'' to choose sides) is to be hated by nearly everyone.
** Also happens in "V" to a certain extent. Your friends will request spare luxury resources and gold on a regular basis, without giving anything back. Although agreeing will improve relations a bit, they can get pretty greedy and if you decline once, they stop asking forever and it´s also a permanent diplomatic penalty. And if you make a request yourself, they will almost always decline and mark it as a penalty anyway...
* FanService: ''Civilization V'''s leaders of either gender. Among the males we have Ramkamhaeng, Montezuma, and [[DownloadableContent Kamehameha]], all of whom are [[WalkingShirtlessScene basically shirtless]], while among the women we have Catherine the Great, whose PimpedOutDress has an ImpossiblyLowNeckline
* FictionalHoliday: [[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29661/Maryland_Declares_September_21_Civilization_V_Day.php Not so fictional.]]
** There still is "We Love the King Day".
* FogOfWar
* FourX: One of the titans of the genre.
* TheFundamentalist: Isabella in ''Civilization IV''. If you aren't whatever religion she is (usually Buddhist), prepare for WAR! There is an actual government type called Fundamentalism in ''Civilization II'', and a Theocracy civic in ''Civilization IV''. ''Civ 5'' has several "Social Policies", of which one can have either Piety or Rationalism. You are forever barred from the other, likely for this reason.
* GameMod: Tons, including FallFromHeaven.
* GenderBender: In ''Civilization II'', Leonardo's Workshop automatically upgrades all your Diplomat units to Spy units. The Diplomat is depicted as a little man in formal wear, the Spy as a FemmeFatale in a LittleBlackDress. Happens again in ''Civilization IV'', as pre-industrial era spies, men in black robes, transform into women in skin tight stealth suits upon reaching the industrial era.
* GenderFlip: All great people in ''Civilization IV'' are represented by male units, though a significant number of them are actually women. Among other things, this gives Joan of Arc quite an impressive beard.
* GeoEffects: All types of terrain give various offensive and/or defensive bonuses to units attacking to or defending from them. Furthermore, all types of terrain produce specific amounts of Food, Gold and Production, which can be altered with "Improvements" such as farms, watermills, railroads, etc.
** V's hex system now includes actual line of sight, and ranged units will need a clear shot at their target. If a hill, forest or mountain is one hex between the target and the unit, no dice. (Unless you're in the modern era...)
* GlassCannon: Cannons (duh). Also, catapults and various other forms of artillery. Generally portrayed as a powerful offensive or bombardment unit with little to no defensive capabilities whatsoever, which make them easy to capture if left undefended by another military unit.
** In ''Civilization V'', archers, catapults and other ranged units can now fire from further away than in front of the enemy's faces (usually leading in previous games to getting smacked down without an escort on the same tile). A necessary change as they're still as fragile as ever and units can't share spaces.
* GlobalCurrency: Undifferentiated gold (which is still used before you research "currency" and gain the ability to trade it with other players). Strangely enough, in ''Civilization IV'' you can use the UnitedNations to enact a single global currency, boosting trade. This is probably because modeling currency exchange rates is well beyond the scope of the game's economic system.
* GlobalWarming: Better watch that pollution, or your cities will sink! More recent games have backed off on this and will instead occasionally alter a terrain square to an inferior type, such as grasslands to deserts.
** ''Call To Power'', which continued much further into the future than a normal Civilization title, took this concept to its logical conclusion. The problem got much, much worse before ultimately getting better through the use of advanced technology (and, possibly, ecoterrorism). Of course, by that point, the majority of your population will have likely already relocated to undersea cities and/or space, rendering the point somewhat moot.
* AGodAmI: Ramesses II from ''Civilization V''. Appropriate since [[TruthInTelevision all Egyptian Pharaohs were considered gods.]] Occasionally Alexander the Great gives this to you when you beat him, he goes into a HeroicBSOD and exclaims "How could this be? I am Heir to the Gods!"
** Subverted in ''Civ V'', by Nebuchadnezzer II of Babylon, who when you greet him will say "The fools outside think I am a god. That seems unlikely."
** A few others dip into this as well, depending on what culture they had. Montezuma, for instance.
* GracefulLoser: Some of the leaders in ''Civilization V''.
* HaveAGayOldTime: In ''Civilization II'', when you changed governments, the newspaper would announce, "[Your Citizens] Are Revolting!" To which all the AI players' citizens would go, "Well, duh."
* HerdHittingAttack: Artillery in ''Civilization IV'', and others with the Collateral Damage promotion. All units in the original ''Civilization'' and ''Civilization II''.
** Not to mention nukes.
* HistoricalBeautyUpdate: ''Civilization Revolution's'' national leaders, especially the females.
** Surprisingly inverted in ''Civilization III'' for the Greeks, when for some reason they make Alexander the Great, actually one of the few genuinely good-looking historical leaders, pretty scrawny and unattractive.
* HistoricalInJoke: Why does [[NapoleonBonaparte Napoleon]]'s unique ability in ''V'' expire with the discovery of Steam Power? Because, as ''IV'' quoted, Napoleon [[ItWillNeverCatchOn thought the concept was nonsense]].
* HollywoodHistory: There has not been a single game where Roman Legionaries have been properly depicted.
* HumanPopsicle: The ones that go into the spaceship that flies to ''AlphaCentauri''.
** ''Call To Power'' features cryogenic freezing chambers. In addition to their normal benefits, they also provide citizens of a Theocratic government a happiness boost. [[FigureItOutYourself Derive from that what you will]].
* HumansAreWhite: With the exception of special units, all units in ''Civilization III'' and ''IV'' are white. However, the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''Civilization IV'' added different skin sets for different civilizations (Mali has black swordsmen etc).
* HumongousMecha: ''Civilization V'' features the "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Giant Death Robot]]", which can only be acquired in the late game and is a way to cement your CurbStompBattle victory.
** The official [[ExpansionPack Beyond the Sword]] [[GameMod mod]] "The Next War" also features one.
* IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: Just click the link, there's a big list on the trope page.
* InferredHolocaust:
** In an eerily literal example, one of the expansion packs to ''Civilization III'' includes a [[ThoseWackyNazis fascist]] government type; immediately after a civilization adopts fascism, it suffers a slight population loss for a few turns, presumably as `undesirables` are, ahem, [[ThePurge purged]] by the SecretPolice.
** Forced labor (present in several forms of government in the same game, and under the Slavery civic in ''Civ IV'') has pretty much the same connotation. More liberal forms of government replace this method with the standard option to rush-build things by throwing enough money at it.
** Razing towns kills it´s entire population. Although capitals can never be razed, so it´s not possible to kill off entire races.
* InjunCountry: One of the civilizations added in "Beyond the Sword" is "Native America"[[hottip:*:Their leader is Sitting Bull of the Lakota, their Unique Unit is the Cheyenne Dog Soldier and their Unique Building is the Haida Totem Pole]]. Not the Iroquois, not the Lakota, not the Haida, [[CriticalResearchFailure just "Native America"]]. For the record, this makes as much sense as a Europe civ lead by Napoleon, whose Unique Unit is the Cossack and the Unique Building being the Forum. This is what happens when you want to do something to include Native American civilizations, but don't have enough room for all of them. (You could make an entire Civ mod out of [=AmerInd=] wars.)
** There is a mod that fixes this by including every major Native American civilization, [[ShownTheirWork using their own native names]].
* InstantAwesomeJustAddMecha: Civilization 5's Giant Death Robot (yes, it's actually called that.)
* InstantWinCondition: Once an ending condition is reached, that civ wins, no matter how the actual situation looks at the time. There could be a massive column of tanks ready to flatten an enemy's capital, but if the spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri, they win.
** Or, more egregiously, by cultural victory. In Civ IV for example, you win instantly for getting your third city up to legendary culture, regardless of whether it's in the process of being destroyed.
* {{Irony}}: The United Nations in ''Civilization II'' actually makes it easier to wage war on nations that aren't willing to fight.
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: Napoleon providing a Real Life example is the quote for steam power in ''IV''.
** Added on to in ''V'': Napoleon gets free culture per turn until Steam Power is discovered.
* JustOneMoreLevel: Some games directly invoke this by prompting the player with the option "Just one more turn" after they win the game or when they try to quit.
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Played straight in ''III'. The best time to be playing Japanese is during the Medieval Era in that game. Once you get access to the Samurai, you can hack and slash your way through any and all other Civs using a pure Samurai force, until the gunpowder era finally renders them obsolete.
** Play somewhat straight in 4, as well. Instead of replacing knights, samurai instead replace Macemen, who are the best melee units in the game. Against other melee units, the samurai's strong attack and First Strikes make them damn near unstoppable. Against knights, which serve as the medieval cavalry unit, [[CurbStompBattle it's a whole 'nother story]].
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: You can play this game far into the future as you like, rack up a bunch of "Future Techs", discover Fusion Power and journey into the stars. However, weapons technology will never pass the modern day era. Can be averted with player-made modifications or official scenarios, such as Next War and Final Frontier in ''Beyond the Sword''. The non-canonical ''Civilization: Call To Power'' averted this trope by introducing two new Ages: Genetic and Diamond, featuring advanced plasma and fusion-based weaponry.
* LargeHam The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTIk80uBPg Military Advisor]] in 'II''.
* LittleBlackDress: Worn by the Spy in ''Civilization II''.
* LostTechnology: In ''Civilization V'', Ancient Ruins have a chance of giving a military unit a free upgrade. In the early game, you can get Archers, Spearmen, and even Swordsmen before researching them normally. It takes a turn for the absurd, however, when Ancient Ruins that have been sitting untouched since the beginning of the game can upgrade your Musketmen to Infantry, or your Tank to a Modern Armor. It's less likely to happen now since an official patch has made it impossible for a previously upgraded unit to receive this bonus.
** This was slightly more or less (depending on how you look at it) pronounced in the earlier games, which did not have Civilization-specific units. Thus, your military typically consisted of something of an AnachronismStew.
* MegaCorp: You can found them in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion.
* AMillionIsAStatistic: Inherently, based on the nature of the game. In ''Civilization V'', this saying is read aloud when you reach the Modern Era.
* MillionMookMarch: Large standing armies come at a cost not building anything else ''and'' support costs and thus not all that viable for non-pure military. They suddenly do become viable as soon as you access to "flight" and build an airport in a dedicated military city. This allows you to instantly transport a unit as soon as it is completed to any of your cities (or allied cities if needed) while the production center may not have any buildings all that useful to build at that point in the game.
** "V" offers a few Policies that make a small army worthwhile, and the combat system generally favors small but high-tech units. However, you can have as many planes in the same city as you want, which invokes this trope if you happen to have enough oil or aluminium to support a large air force.
* MisplacedAccent: While having the civilization leaders speak their native languages in ''Civilization V'' was a nice touch, several people criticized some of their accents as historically inaccurate: Napoleon loses his Corsican accent, George Washington has a BillClinton-esque modern American accent rather than anything from the 18th century, and Catherine speaks perfect Russian despite being born as and raised by Germans.
* MsFanservice: Catherine the Great, Queen Isabella and a few others.. AND HOW!
** mind you, Catherine averted this on earlier games, being shown as some kind of GrandeDame or BigBeautifulWoman.
* MultipleEndings: Multiple win conditions, actually. The first two games had the warlike method (conquer every other civilization) or the peaceful method (send a spaceship to another planet). Later games introduced diplomatic, cultural, or domination-based victory conditions.
** Domination was taken out, and ''Revolution'' added Economic: Have 200,000 gold and build the World Bank wonder. Sadly this was not included in 5.
** The diplomatic victory has changed quite a bit. In ''IV'', it was about getting enough votes to become supreme leader (good luck doing this in a multiplayer game). In ''V'', it's mostly financial. City states make requests from time to time, and if conquered by another civ, you can liberate them to guarantee a vote from them, but in practice, most influence with city states is simply bought with gold, ''especially'' if other players are competing for diplomatic victory.
* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: When playing on the higher difficulty levels in ''Civ V'', the AI doesn't actually get smarter but instead relies on simply ignoring the game rules that limit the player's own success to do as it pleases.
** The main way of controlling the player's expansion is happiness. Playing on the Prince ("normal") difficulty, the AI only gets 60% of the unhappiness that the player does, and gets more happiness to start and an extra point of happiness for each luxury. This roughly translates to allowing an AI Civ to be twice as large as a human one with the same level of happiness, on normal, the difficulty where "The AI receives no particular bonuses".
** In earlier games, it would simply decide "now's a good time to instantly build a wonder". Nowadays, the cheating is mostly relegated to numbers; a lot of them.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Giant Death Robot.
** The [[OhCrap Dreadnought]] in Beyond the Sword.
* {{Narrator}}: In more recent games, they've had most of their descriptive text be read aloud, following in the footsteps of ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri''. Though in this case, they only have one person doing the job:
** LeonardNimoy in ''Civ IV''. Though Nimoy wasn't hired for the expansion packs, and their narration ends up quite jarring.
** W. Morgan Sheppard in ''Civ V''.
* NeutralNoLonger: In ''II'', a Spy planting a nuclear device causes all civilizations to go at war against the perpetrator. In ''V'', city-states become permanent enemies to a civilization which keeps attacking and conquering city states.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: In ''Revolution'', granting certain upgrades gives the unit a title, so you can wind up with unit called a "Ninja Samurai Knight Army." And it is just as awesome as the name would suggest.
* NoBloodForPhlebotinum: If you don't have a resource and can't get it through trade or peaceful expansion, the only options left are either do without it or resort to violence.
** Beyond the Sword introduced the "Greed" and "Corporate Expansion" quests, which codify this.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In ''Revolution'', the modern era diplomacy advisor is clearly modeled on Condoleeza Rice.
* NonEntityGeneral: Both played straight for the player's leader (although you can choose your leader from among all the available ones, AI players react to you the same way regardless), and averted by AI leaders, some of whom are much more trigger-happy than others (we're looking at you, Isabella), and all of whom have personalized and sometimes entertaining interactions. For instance, if [[strike:sufficiently offended]] presented with any deal she doesn't like, [[MyGirlIsASlut Catherine the Great]] may "slap" "the player", complete with StarTrekShake, while if your relations are good (heh heh) she may favor you with a flirtatious wink. Tick off Sumerian badass Gilgamesh, and he'll grab your throat, bring you up close for a DeathGlare, then hurl you back.
* NoSwastikas: The Third Reich is conspicuous in its near-total absence, although there is one quote from AdolfHitler for ''IV'''s Fascism tech, and Erwin Rommel is featured as a Great General in ''Warlords'' (though Rommel wasn't actually a Nazi). The strange people who yearn for Hitler's inclusion in the series tend to note that [[JosefStalin Stalin]] and [[MaoZedong Mao]], who were just as nasty if not quite as infamous, are playable leaders (though [[BannedInChina no country with paying customers will ban the game because of them]]).
** Because of this, one of the best-known player mods to ''II'' is the so-called "Fascism Patch", which, in addition to doing a great many other things (bugfixes, better-looking units and so on) replaces the Fundamentalism government type with Fascism and gives the player appropriate units including the Stormtrooper (elite infantry) and the Dive Bomber.
** And there's the WorldWarII scenario in ''II''; it has special AI so that in the first few turns the Axis and Allies will repeat events that happened in the real world, like the Axis occupying Holland.
** On the other hand, the only ''III'' built-in scenario dealing with World War II (in the ''Conquests'' expansion) was World War II in the Pacific.
** The "World War II: Road to War" mod included with ''Civ IV: Beyond the Sword'' solves this problem by including two versions of each scenario -- one with Hitler, and one in which he is replaced with Franz von Papen. The former is presumably taken out in countries where Nazi symbolism and direct references to the Third Reich are banned.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent:
** The intro movie for ''Civilization V'' has a Arabic Chieftain explaining a dream of world domination to his son. For some reason, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMW5-YXTKtY both speak with heavy English accents]]. Of course, since he dreams of his people being samurai, building the Great Pyramid, storming a castle, and being Norse invaders, the two are likely suppose to represent a generic vision of humanity rather than a specific civilization.
* NukeEm: Across all the games, nuclear weapons are by far the most devastating weapon it's possible to build (but see OneHitKill below). Using them, however, is something of a MoralEventHorizon as far as the game is concerned, causing all AI players to declare war with you automatically and leaving horrendous pollution behind, beginning a catastrophic period of GlobalWarming. Interestingly, in ''IV'' you can get the [[UnitedNations UN]] to sign a nonproliferation treaty banning the building (but not use) of nuclear weapons, and an advanced player can sometimes do this after building his own nukes, [[ManipulativeBastard leaving himself the sole nuclear armed power in the game]].
* OneHitKill: The Eco Ranger unit in ''Call To Power''. Don't let that brightly-painted Flower Power exterior fool you. What it kills, in one hit, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxBVc2cSFeI is a city]].
** That cutscene is inspired by, and [[TheJimmyHartVersion borrows the music from]], ''{{Akira}}''. That says everything you need to know right there.
** Its method of operation, on the other hand, is a [[{{Homage}} direct tribute]] to the [[StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Genesis Device]].
* OneHitPointWonder: All military units were this until ''Civilization II'', which introduced a HitPoints system to avert the "Spearman Beats Tank" problem. ''Civilization III'' simplified the combat system but reintroduced the problem. ''Civilization IV'' merged HitPoints and combat power into one figure, making DeathOfAThousandCuts a serious problem.
** "V" generally averts this but there are several situations where units become OHPWs (despite having 10 Hitpoints):
*** Any non-combat unit (Great People, Workers and Settlers) are instantly killed or captured if an enemy military unit moves onto their tile.
*** Any embarked unit is instantly killed by enemy naval units moving onto their tile, unless they have Defensive Embarkment.
*** Units stationed in towns are instantly killed if the town is captured or nuked.
*** Finally, Japan's cultural power is that damaged units do not lose combat prowess. There is even an achievement to be earned by sending a [[CriticalExistenceFailure 1-HP unit]] against an opposing unit and winning.
* OminousLatinChanting: [[ByzantineEmpire Justinian I's]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEVNDw90VyI diplomacy theme]], which is contrary to popular belief ''[[DanBrowned NOT]]'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9K_pe00F2o Deus Iudex Iustus]].
* OpeningNarration: In the first game, this was used to cover the LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading. In the fourth game, it was brought back as a tribute... And recited by LeonardNimoy! ''V'' has [[WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}} Xanatos' dad]] doing the opening narrations as well as the quotes for when you research something.
* OvertRendezvous: In the intro to ''Civilization IV'''s expansion, an image of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg address {{Match Cut}}s to his memorial, where two spies are passing along photos of Soviet missile sites.
* PathOfGreatestResistance: This is very useful to determine the point of origin of an enemy (Barbarian or Civilized) whose camp/cities you haven't found yet.
* PermanentElectedOfficial: You. Heck, not even ''TIME'' will free them from your rule.
* PleaseSelectNewCityName: The TropeNamer.
* ThePowerOfRock: Rock 'N Roll is a constructable Wonder of the World in ''Civ IV''. It even plays TheVelvetUnderground's "Rock and Roll" during the movie. Thanks to the TechTree, it usually gets finished around the same time a Diplomatic Victory becomes possible. Since building it allows you to export "Hit Singles," you can build global good will by giving them away for free right before elections are held, thereby literally winning the game via ThePowerOfRock.
* {{Privateer}}
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Some leaders act this way in the dialogue, although their behaviour towards you may not be that honorable.
* PuppetState:
** In one of the Expansion Packs for ''Civilization IV'', any sufficiently powerful civ can make any sufficiently weak civ into their vassal state. If the vassal grows powerful enough (there are exact numbers), it can regain independence.
** In Civ 5, you can't make an entire civ into one, but when you conquer an enemy city you have the option between annexing it (which simply makes it on of your civ's cities, but generates a lot of unhappiness until a courthouse is built) or making it a puppet (which gives all the science, culture, and gold it generates to your civ, but you cannot control its production, for either buildings or units).
*** Puppeted towns are also automatically set to focus on gold production, making them fairly useless for any other purpose.
* RandomEvent: Introduced in the ''Civilization IV'' expansions. A lot of them are just random things that affect improvements and tile output (mine collapses, tornados, striking a deposit of jade), while others can change your relationship with your neighbors, such as a politically-arranged marriage collapsing or a high-ranking intelligence agent defecting. Other Random Events depend on your government, such as your hereditary dynasty dying out or [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything an election being too close to call and being settled by the courts]], giving you an incentive to try out as many Civic combinations as possible.
** ''Civilization V'' uses this for city state requests. Especially when they ask for a certain resource or want another city state eliminated.
* RandomlyGeneratedLevels
* RedshirtArmy: "Nationhood" allows you to draft military units, but they are less effective than ones built the normal way and cost population.
* RockBeatsLaser: Due to the behind-the-scenes dice rolls, you can have some truly bizarre outcomes, like the common meme among fans of a spearman beating a tank. Each game after the first altered the combat equations in various ways without actually removing the problem. Fundamentally, it's about units having attack and (in some versions) defense values that fail to take into account basic concepts like range. Therefore, the RandomNumberGod will eventually allow the spearman to get lucky.
** With the right combination of bonuses, it doesn't even need to be a lucky roll. In Civ II, a veteran phalanx (+50% strength) in a mountain-top (x3 defence) city, with walls (x3 defence) would win more often than lose against anything less than a tank.
** Further, there are some "auto win" situations, as in ''Civilization IV'' where ships and aircraft in base/port are automatically destroyed when a land unit occupies their square. Yes, this means you can take out a squadron of stealth fighters and a fleet of battleships with a club-wielding warrior (presumably they bash them into nothing while on the ground/port).
*** Civilization V does this on water. Any embarked land unit can be instantly killed by any ship moving on them.
*** In Civ IV, on the lower difficulties, you are guaranteed to win your first encounters with barbarians. If you haven't used up these "free wins", you can create a barbarian modern armour with WorldBuilder and your warrior will defeat it.
* RuleOfCool: In the introduction video to Civ 5, the {{Narrator}} is sitting at a campfire. In a tent. During the day.
* SandIsWater, TheSkyIsAnOcean, SpaceIsAnOcean, LavaIsBoilingKoolAid: Many game mods substitute different types of terrain for oceans. For example, the Test of Time fantasy cloud world has sky, the Sci-fi orbital map has space, and a {{Dune}} based mod uses sand for the "ocean" terrain, while using, respectively, clouds, orbital platforms, and rocky terrain as "land".
* SaveScumming: Across all the games, it's disturbingly easy to abuse the save feature to get favorable battle outcomes or avoid negative randomly generated events. Some versions try to prevent this by saving the random number generator's seed along with the game, so you get the exact same outcomes after a reload unless you do things in a different order. This option can be turned off, however.
* SchizoTech: A particularly skilled player can roll over his spear-equipped enemies with legions of tanks. (Well, all except That One Unit...)
** This is pretty much bound to happen in any game where one player runs away with the science race, especially in ''Call To Power''. Screw tanks against spearmen - it's far more satisfying to send giant, missile-equipped robots after them. Or, go for the ultimate insult and use a space bomber to vaporize them.
** This problem was noticeably worse before the concept of technological eras was further developed in ''Civilization III''. In the first two games, one could climb disturbingly far up just one or two branches of the tech tree before finally having to go back and research, say, The Wheel.
** In ''II'' and earlier, you didn't necessarily even have to go back and research it. You could trade for techs without having all the prerequisites for them, so if you had all the follow-on techs, and didn't need the specific units or abilities that a particular tech gave you (chariots, in the case of The Wheel in ''II''), you could ignore it completely. Which could lead to hilarious exchanges with AI civs: "We notice that your puny civilization hasn't even discovered The Wheel. We'll gladly give it to you in exchange for the secret of the [[TankGoodness Automobile]]."
* SeparateButIdentical: In full force in the first two games. Installments after ''III'' moved away from this by giving unique units and buildings to each civilization and different traits to each leader, but all civs still draw from the same TechTree (with all that that implies).
* ShoutOut: Many.
** The picture for "The Internet" world wonder is Al Gore.
** Some of the leaders' quotes are movie references ([[Film/DieHard "Now I have a machinegunner. Ho ho ho."]]).
** Every game is guaranteed to contain at least one reference to [[ElvisPresley the king]].
** ''III'' will ask for confirmation when you change government types: "[[TheBeatles You say you want a revolution?]]" Your choices are "you know it's gonna be alright," and "you can count me out!"
** If another leader in ''IV'' is pleased with a trade, they may respond with "Did I ever tell you that you're my hero? You're everything I wish that I could be." Or, "You are the wind beneath my wings, <player>!".
** Also in ''IV'', if you've been at war with someone else for a while, one of the "War Weariness" descriptions is "WAR... What is it good for? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!"
** In ''V'' the music for the Helsinki city-state is "Ievan Polkka" by Loituma, a Finnish song best known from the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wnE4vF9CQ4 Leek Spin]] meme.
** The [[CosmeticAward achievements]] for ''Civilization V'' are almost entirely [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]]. [[DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog "The World Is a Mess, and I Just Need to Rule It"]], [[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined "Ruler of the Twelve Colonies"]], [[Series/DoctorWho "Exterminate! Exterminate!"]]...the list goes on. [[{{Pokemon}} And on.]] [[StarTrek And on.]] [[DaftPunk And on.]] [[TheLonelyIsland And on.]] [[{{Lolcats}} And on.]] [[BackToTheFuture And on.]] [[AltumVidetur And on.]] [[OverlyLongGag And on.]] [[http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationv/achievements.html Here's]] a list.
** In the expert lumberjack's Civilopedia entry for the ''Colonization'' expansion, it states that "[[MontyPythonsFlyingCircus they were lumberjacks and they're OK.]]"
* ShownTheirWork: ''Rhye's and Fall of Civilization'', a historical simulator for ''the entire world'', is ridiculously detailed, with pretty much every tile named after a city that really exists there, and they change according to the controlling Civ. It's a GameMod, not something made by the developers, although one that usually gets included as a bonus in expansion packs for the game.
* SlidingScaleOfTurnRealism: Round by Round.
* SpaceIsNoisy: Averted in ''IV''. If you pull the camera back far enough to show the entire planet, the sound and music fade away to silence.
* StandardSnippet: ''AlsoSprachZarathustra'' is played when you win ''II'' by launching a spaceship.
* StealthPun:
** In ''Civilization Revolution'', the advance that makes the great person Leopold Stokowski more likely to appear is Superconductor.
** In Civ IV, JuliusCaesar's greeting to you when you first meet him is "Welcome to Rome, <player>. Care for some salad? I made it myself."
** The Tech quote for "Machinery" in ''IV'' is "[[DeusExMachina A god from the machine]]"
* SuspiciouslySmallArmy: A "unit" can be anything from one ship or aircraft to 10 soldiers, depending on the game.
* SweetPollyOliver: In ''Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword'' the ordinary spy at earlier ages is a woman disguised as a shepherd with a fake beard. When the age advances she drops the act and dons a SpyCatsuit.
* SymbologyResearchFailure: The Kremlin world wonder... [[RunningGag is actually]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral St. Basil's Cathedral]]. By ''V'', this has become a running gag since the wonder portrait that pops up when you build the Kremlin depicts the actual Kremlin, while the wonder still looks like a cathedral on the world map.
* TakeThat: After your score is computed, it shows where you rank among a list of historical leaders. At the top are people like [[EmperorAugustus Augustus Caesar]], AbrahamLincoln, Hammurabi, Charlemagne, and WinstonChurchill. At the very bottom? DanQuayle. Quayle's "the future will be better tomorrow" quote is also read by Nimoy in ''IV'' when you research your first Future Tech.
* TechTree: Generally containing upwards of 80 technologies. Of course, it does take 6,000 years to climb to the top of it.
* TheThemeParkVersion: ''Revolution'' is definitely the "kiddie introductory Civilization game." Not that it's bad, per se, but it's very simplified and over-exaggerated, especially in art style and presentation.
* ThisIsGonnaSuck: Deity difficulty in ''Civilization IV''. "Muahahahaha! Good luck, sucker!"
* TooDumbToLive: The AI is fond of insulting your "puny little empire" even if you own half the world and are poised to run over them with a legion of tanks. "Now I have a warrior! Ho ho ho!"
** Sometimes the AI will still treat you like that after getting their ass handed to them in a previous war. Including eventually declaring war on you again and losing just as badly.
** Even better, sometimes the AI will ''declare war on you'' from that state, only to dash their army to pieces against your technological superiority. At this point they frantically sue for peace, bribing you with gold, resources and even cities. [[AttackAttackRetreatRetreat To end a war that they started]].
** In Civ V, if the computer believes it has the upper hand in a war through some nebulous logic that apparently reaches this concussion even if you are rapidly blitzkrieging through their cities, it will offer you a peace treaty in exchange of essentially everything you own (money, resources, cities) except for your capital. To end a war ''you are winning''. Perhaps it’s betting on your hand twitching and clicking Accept by accident.
* UngratefulBastard: Tokugawa is a strict isolationist, and it takes ''ridiculous'' amounts of bribery to get him to even open his borders. If Japan is one of the rival empires in 4, you should probably just consider them an enemy and forget diplomatic measures - it's a lot cheaper.
* UnreliableNarrator: The Civilopedia in 4 claims under "Police State" credits it with helping Stalin not lose World War 2, while Stalin's entry says only Russia's sheer size and winter prevented a quick loss. (Of course, would you expect any less [[{{Doublethink}} from Stalin?]])
* UnstableEquilibrium: Present in all ''Civilization'' games. An empire that manages to secure good territory early on can research faster and produce more units, making it easier for them to expand even further. The endgame is typically resolved between two or three strong empires while the weaker ones have already been wiped out or reduced to barely influential lapdogs with practically zero chance of winning.
* UselessUsefulSkill: Some of the Civics in ''Civ IV'' were notorious for being worthless -- most notably Environmentalism, which granted a bonus for a resource (forests and jungles) that you'd more than likely eradicated by the time you became able to use it. Environmetalism became ''far'' more powerful in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion.
* VideoGameCaringPotential: [[HundredPercentAdorationRating "We Love The King Day celebrated in <city name>."]]
** It's a part of gameplay for ''V''; a City will require a certain resource and if you can get the required resource the local populace start getting busy.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Poison your neighbors' water supplies! Bomb farmlands and cause the starving deaths of millions! [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWzMeLdU6FA Nuke Gandhi!]]
** ''[[TheDogShotFirst Gandhi nuked me first!]]''
*** That Gandhi can be a real bastard sometimes.
*** "Gandhi is a notorious liar and cheat! Deal with him carefully!"
*** This actually makes a comeback in ''Civilization V.''
** In addition to allowing (read: encouraging) you to use slavery, Civilization also entices you to wipe out entire nations. If you manage to subjugate or genocide every race but your own, the game declares you a winner.
* VariablePlayerGoals: Any civilization can achieve any of the win conditions, but some civs have particular traits that make achieving certain goals easier than others.
* VastBureaucracy: Different games have found different ways to represent this:
** The first three games had a corruption mechanic which affected individual cities, affected by government type, empire size, and the particular city's distance from the capital. This is supposed to represent a sprawling empire's tendency to be plagued by expensive red tape, inefficiency, and graft.
** The fourth replaces the corruption mechanic with city maintenance costs and Civics upkeep, largely representing the same thing. There's also a Bureaucracy Civic, which provides a significant boost to your civ's capital (and no other city at all).
** The fifth just gave up and made everything global; the empire ''itself'' is the basic unit of measure, instead of individual cities:
*** If you build a Colosseum, it adds +X smileys to your ''empire's'' Happiness total. This makes war a lot easier, since it eliminates the catch-22 of newly-conquered citizens who are too furious to build things that would [[BuffySpeak un-furiize]] them. However, it does cause some FridgeLogic when you realize that angry citizens in newly-conquered (say) Shanghai are being pacified by the goings-on of a theater in New York.
*** On the other hand, other mechanics, particularly Culture, slant the game towards empires with a small number of well-developed cities. The more towns you have, the more Culture points each new policy requires; this slows down anyone who's going for a Culture Victory or who just wants the bonuses policies provide. Plus, the AI will get hostile if you encroach on (what they perceive to be) their territory.
* VideoGameTime: The years pass by in a strange way in ''Civilization'': In the beginning, a turn ranges from 50 years to a couple of centuries, depending on the game speed, but slows down as the years go by. Even in later ages, unit speeds are ridiculously slow (a year to fly from one city to another!). However, it's an AcceptableBreakFromReality in a game of this scope. To give you an idea, you can have a unit of cavalry serving you for over 2000 years.
* WarElephants: In ''Civ II'', they become available when you discover Polytheism, for some reason. In ''Civ III'', they're India's special unit, replacing knights. In ''Civ IV'', they become available when you discover Construction, but you also need access to Ivory.
** Two separate versions show up as special units in ''Civ V''; the standard War Elephant replacing the Chariot Archer for India and Naresuan's Elephant replacing Siam's Knight.
* WeWillHavePerfectHealthInTheFuture: One of the wonders in ''Call To Power'' is an immunity chip.
** In ''Civ III'' and ''Civ IV'', every Future Tech increases the civilization's health and happiness. If you get enough Future Tech your citizens will have perfect health and a massive grin.
* WarForFunAndProfit: Something that the A.I. civilizations invoke in ''Civ V''. They will declare war against another civilization that they have military parity with, then rather than pour all their resources into beating down that civ, they will just fight it to a stalemate. After getting bored of this, it will then propose a peace treaty, with terms highly favorable to themselves and costly to the other civilization. In doing so, it gets to loose some of the military units it has been paying maintenance on, and get some nice access to luxury and strategic resources, and a fair amount of money to boot.
** This can even happen without any enemy unit ever entering your borders.
* WaterSourceTampering: Poisoning a city's water supply is a potential espionage action in ''Civilization II''. Succeeding reduces the city's population.
** It's also possible in ''Civilization IV'', and pulling it off slaps them with a massive health penalty for a time.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome:
** The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__29A8qWkrc Opening Menu for Civlization IV: Warlords]], which is a Lebanese folk song called "Al Nadda". It sounds pretty {{Badass}}, right?. [[http://www.shira.net/music/lyrics/a-nada.htm Well, it's a]] ''LOVE SONG''[[hottip:* :Of course, with lyrics like "And if they refuse to give you to me, I will tear down the high mountains", the awesomeness of this song is probably justified]]!
** Note that "Baba Yetu," which (as mentioned above) is considered the new leitmotif of the series, is actually an adaptation of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili.
*** [[FridgeBrilliance Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty good fit for a game called Civilization.]]
** The Greek theme, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kpVrmRkPWk Epitaph of Seikilos,]] is the single oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition from anywhere in the world and is roughly 2000 years old. The song was found carved on a tombstone by Seikilos to his (presumed) wife Euterpe. For a more accurate version, try [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xERitvFYpAk here.]]
* WhatTheHellPlayer: Try to perform certain illegal actions in the game, and you'll get some smart-aleck game notifications.
** For ''Civilization II'':
*** Trying to build a city at sea:
---->"It may surprise you to learn that cities cannot be built at sea."
*** Trying to airlift naval units:
---->"Ships cannot be airlifted, silly."
** In a slightly more serious vein, in ''Civilization V'' you get this reaction from other civilizations (and City-States) if you're too aggressive towards City-States. This wouldn't be as big a deal if it wasn't for the ''complete lack of a way to repair your reputation'' once a City-State declares war on you. They decide you're a jerk, and that's the end of it.
*** There's a single, roundabout way to repair your rep. Example: Venice is at Permanent War with you. Venice gets conquered by another civ (say, by India). Then, when you swoop in with your Giant Death Robot and kick that bastard Ghandi out of Venice, you'll be given the option (alongside the normal options of "Annex" and "Create Puppet State") to "Liberate the City." This not only returns Venice back to being a sovereign city-state, but they'll be so grateful to be rid of Ghandi's tyrannical rule that your new relationship with Venice starts with the Allied bar heavily in the blue.
*** Note though one can make peace before this stage. It's only once a City-State has declared permanent war that relationships break down completely. It's usually justified though as it takes either intentionally going out and bullying City-States or a super-power manipulating them into going to war with you.
* WholePlotReference: Many scenarios reference the plots of other works:
** ''Beyond the Sword'''s "Next War" is basically ''[[NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' with another state added for balance.
** ''Call to Power 2'''s "Nuclear Detente" is the StarTrekTheOriginalSeries episode [[http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon_(episode) A Taste of Armageddon]] [[AC:[[InSpace on a planet]]]], complete with names.
** Another ''[=CtP2=]'' RPG-like scenario essentially follows TheMagnificentSevenSamurai plot.
* WorkerUnit: Workers and settlers.
* WriterOnBoard: Some of the Civics descriptions in ''Civilization IV'' are a bit ... odd. The one for Pacifism basically denounces it as hypocrisy. [[DemocracyIsBad And guess what the one about Universal suffrage says]].
** They all attempt to list the pros and cons of each civic. Even slavery has its advantages. Interestingly, they couldn't think of anything good to say about the caste system.
* YouKeepUsingThatWord: "Factoid" is used the way the word "fact" would be in Civ 5's Civilopedia.
* YouFailHistoryForever:
** One Civilopedia entry infamously described Julius Caesar as being the "first emperor of Rome." That was actually his adopted son Augustus; Julius himself was never anything more than dictator for life.
** The Civilopedia entries for marines and ironclads imply they were both American inventions.
** The Pikeman unit in ''Civilization V'' wields a halberd, not a pike.
*** Although historically, halberds were often wielded in pikeman formations.
** In ''Civilization 4'' and ''Revolution'', Saladin is the leader of Arabia. In [[RealLife Real Life]], Saladin was a Kurd (born in what is now Iraq) who ruled most of the Arab world... from Egypt (itself a conquest of his, in a way).
** ''Civilization 5's'' quote for Advanced Ballistics. Who the hell is [[TomLehrer Tom Hehrer]]?
** In Civilization IV, [[CyrusTheGreat Cyrus]] and Darius look quite different, while they were directly related in real life.
* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: Zeppelins are unlocked by the late-mid-game tech "physics", while heavier than air ships are unlocked latter via "flight" tech (not ''that'' far after physics, but some turns worth). Depending on the games tech progress, these might not go out of style for a long time. Unit wise, Airships can only bomb ground and sea units for a bit of damage, which is helpful given how strong garrisoned units can be, though it's not much damage (only able to reduce them to 80% of their max HP), and have no counters (short of taking the city they are based in) before "flight" (and if only ''you'' have that...).
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''Just... one... more... edit!'' *click*
