| 1 | %%Image selected per Image Pickin' thread (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1475863266000909900&page=1). |
| 2 | %%Do not replace/remove the image without starting a new thread. |
| 3 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/civcrop.png]] |
| 4 | [[caption-width-right:300:[[JustOneMoreLevel Just. One. More. Turn.]]]] |
| 5 | ->''"I have discovered. I have led. I have conquered. I have inspired. I have built a civilization to stand the test of time. What will your civilization stand for?"'' |
| 6 | -->-- '''''Civilization V'' trailer''' |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ''Civilization'' is a popular [[FourX "4X"]] [[VideoGameLongRunners Long Runner]] game series. The original game was developed in 1991 by Creator/SidMeier, and there have been five [[NumberedSequels direct sequels]] as of October 21, 2016, numerous expansion packs, and many spin-offs (''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', ''VideoGame/{{Colonization}}'', ''VideoGame/CivilizationCallToPower'', ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth''), as well as the much simplified ''Civilization Revolution'' for home consoles, the Platform/NintendoDS and [=iPhone=], ''Civ World'' for Website/{{Facebook}}, and the MMO ''Civilization Online''. 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. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | 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 [[VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri sending a colony to Alpha Centauri]]. Later games added more win conditions: get elected leader of the world by the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations, controlling a dominant chunk of the planet (which kind of renders obsolete the "conquer everyone" goal, which is probably why it was removed again later), convert everyone to your religion, or create a culture so influential that it engulfs everyone else's. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | All aspects of the civilization are under the control of [[NonEntityGeneral the player]], including exploration, [[TechTree technological advancement]], [[SettlingTheFrontier 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, 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. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | It is (in)famous for leading to gameplay sessions that [[JustOneMoreLevel extend well past the player's original self-imposed deadline]], [[http://www.civanon.org/home.shtml so much so that a joke "Civilization Anonymous" website was made.]] (Unfortunately the link now redirects to the series' main page, but the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has preserved [[https://web.archive.org/web/20050602003045/http://www.civanon.org/home.shtml the original]].) |
| 15 | |
| 16 | [[http://youtu.be/IJiHDmyhE1A "Baba Yetu"]] ("Our Father" in Swahili), the menu music from ''Civilization IV'',[[note]]Technically, the re-arrangement of the piece for the album "Calling All Dawns."[[/note]] 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. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | The franchise so far consists of the following games: |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 21 | |
| 22 | [[folder:Main series games]] |
| 23 | * ''Civilization'' (1991): The one that started it all. Designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley after the successes of ''VideoGame/SilentService'', ''VideoGame/SidMeiersPirates'' and ''VideoGame/RailroadTycoon'', ''Civilization'' (aka ''Civ I'') is noted for being one of the first examples of the 4X genre. It introduced basic mechanics such as selecting a civilization, building cities and units, and waging warfare. At this point, the only victory conditions available were conquering the whole world or winning the space race by sending a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. |
| 24 | * ''Civilization II'' (1996): The first of many sequels in the franchise. ''Civ II'' introduced multiple innovations such as changing from a top-down view of the world map to an isometric view, improved diplomacy, and factoring in the effects of corruption and waste on a civilization. A third victory type, which involved surviving to the year 2020 and achieving the top score, was introduced in this game. |
| 25 | * ''Civilization III'' (2001): The second sequel, the first one that wasn't designed by Sid Meier, and the first to use limited 3D graphics through a SpritePolygonMix. The game was the first to move away from the CosmeticallyDifferentSides of the previous games by giving each civilization unique traits and unique units; for example the Roman civilization could field their signature Legions easily due to their Militaristic and Commercial traits. New features include dedicated {{Worker Unit}}s that built tile improvements like roads and mines in lieu of Settlers like in the previous game; the Culture mechanic, which determines the extent of a city's control over its surrounding area; and Strategic Resources, where access to them controls what kinds of units a civilization can create. Three new victory types were introduced to the game, namely Domination, where a player's land area and population dwarfs that of every other civilization left, Culture, where a player's accumulated culture surpasses that of everyone else's, and the Diplomatic victory, earned by a player being elected the leader of the United Nations. |
| 26 | * ''Civilization IV'' (2005): The first game in the series to make the leap to full 3D. The game marked a return to the top-down, square grid of ''Civ I'' after the previous two games used an isometric view. Multiple game mechanics were introduced in ''Civ IV'' such as Civics, which served as a set of modular bonuses that the player could mix and match to suit their needs; civilizations having multiple leader options, where they shared unique units but had different traits, allowing for more variety in gameplay; and a religion mechanic where various religions would compete for influences in cities around the world. The game's voice overs for technologies and the OpeningNarration were provided by Creator/LeonardNimoy, in a first for the franchise. |
| 27 | * ''Civilization V'' (2010): The first game in the series to employ a hexagonal map rather than the square grid of previous games. New gameplay features include the full implementation of Science and Culture as resources in their own right, fully unique civilization bonuses rather than civilizations being assigned traits from a common pool, and the Social Policy Tree, which acts as a hybrid between a Tech Tree and the Civics mechanic of ''Civ IV''. Creator/WMorganSheppard took over narration and voice-over roles for this game. |
| 28 | ** ''Civilization V: Gods & Kings'' (2012): The first expansion to ''Civ V''. The expansion reintroduced the religion mechanic first seen in ''Civ IV'', but with more features to the point where the player could customize their religion as they desired, the debut of the Faith resource, as well as features like reworked diplomacy and combat alongside a number of new civilizations. |
| 29 | ** ''Civilization V: Brave New World'' (2013): The second expansion to ''Civ V''. The expansion introduced a significant rework of the Policy Tree and introducing Ideologies as a late-game version of the Policy Tree, a revamp of the Cultural Victory introducing the Tourism mechanic, as well as a number of new civilizations and wonders. |
| 30 | * ''Civilization VI'' (2016): The latest game in the series as of 2024. New features include the creation of a full-fledged Civics Tree separate from and parallel to the science-based TechTree, which focuses on unlocking Social Policies and culturally related advances; unstacked cities, where World Wonders and city districts are placed on tiles separate from the city center, allowing for a greater degree of city planning; and replacing Workers with Builders, who have limited charges but instantaneously complete tile improvements. This time around, Creator/SeanBean handled narration and voice-over for the game. |
| 31 | ** ''Civilization VI: Rise and Fall'' (2018): The first major expansion to ''Civ VI''. New features include the Eras mechanic, where a civilization's fate can be dictated by how many objectives the player achieves before the era changes; Governors, each of whom provide a specialized bonus to a single city at any given time; and Emergencies, which are emergent scenarios that a player may choose to respond to as the need arises. |
| 32 | ** ''Civilization VI: Gathering Storm'' (2019): The second major expansion to ''Civ VI''. New features include a major rework of the Strategic Resource mechanic; climate change as a late-game mechanic, whose effects the player can either choose to mitigate or exacerbate; the reintroduction of the Diplomatic Victory; and map features such as rivers and mountain ranges being named by the civilization that discovers them. |
| 33 | [[/folder]] |
| 34 | |
| 35 | Not to be confused with the [[Film/{{Civilization}} 1916 silent film]] with the same title or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilisation_(TV_series) the noted 1969 BBC documentary]] about art history. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | ---- |
| 38 | !!This game provides examples of: |
| 39 | |
| 40 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 41 | |
| 42 | [[folder:Tropes A-C]] |
| 43 | * AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Many, as a game which truly approximated all the headaches of running an Empire would only be interesting to professors, extremely hardcore gamers, and megalomaniacs. |
| 44 | * AchievementMockery: Some of ''V'''s achievements are less than complimentary, including "He threw a car at my head!" for having to buy back one of your cities from barbarian conquerors, and "Seriously?!?" for repeatedly failing to construct Wonders. |
| 45 | * AdventureArchaeologist: In ''Brave New World'', both the archaeologist icon and a specific achievement are {{Shout Out}}s to ''[[TropeCodifier the]]'' [[Franchise/IndianaJones Adventure Archaeologist]]. |
| 46 | * AIBreaker: The Great Wall Wonder in ''Revolution 2'' completely destroys them. The AI is programmed to, upon contact, constantly wage war with you, barring situations where you've managed to defeat them so thoroughly that they can only last a couple more turns if the situation continues. The Great Wall, however, forces all civilizations to be at peace with you, and to offer peace if they're at war. The way it breaks them is that rather than realize they can't fight you, they think they're in those few turns before they declare war again rather than trying anything else, and indeed, the diplomacy menu for other civs pops up a lot and has the civs you're at peace with offer peace and do nothing else on a regular basis like they would if they'd be allowed to declare war (though without trying to coerce your much stronger civ). |
| 47 | ** Likewise, in the same game, war utterly breaks the AI’s competence. Every single civ is supposed to prioritize war with you, and are very eager to blow all their resources on it, leaving very little for development beyond what’s required to advance. Conversely, if the AI is left to their own devices and can’t discover you, they’re scarily competent at using their resources effectively, to the point where they can complete the space shuttle well before the 1940s. As a comparison, there’s an achievement for completing it before a man was put on the moon in real life, over 20 years later. |
| 48 | * AintTooProudToBeg: In ''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. |
| 49 | * TheAllSeeingAI: |
| 50 | ** Used completely straight in the earlier games. |
| 51 | ** ''III'' had the AI knowing which cities had the fewest units in them. As discussed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI Playing to Lose: AI and "Civilization"]] (at 30 minute mark), players exploited this by noticing the AI build up an amphibious invasion force, intentionally leaving a city empty to attract the invasion, and switch the empty city to a distant coastline just before they're about to land. |
| 52 | ** Mostly averted in ''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. |
| 53 | ** In ''V'', AI players frequently "covet your lands," despite having never visited your land and not knowing where it is or what resources it has. |
| 54 | ** One may, early in the game, witness the AI placing cities in almost dead tundra areas of no value, at the cost of better areas, and proceed to defend these places heavily. This is not the settler-happy AI function at work and it has nothing to do with the land's value at this time. The AI is aware of the locations of all resources, no matter the age. Later ages will reveal these resources to players with proper research. And that less-than-ideal location [[note]]or even an ideal location, the richness of the location in early ages is not the point here[[/note]] suddenly ends up full of Oil, Coal and Aluminum nodes. The AI doesn't have the ability to harvest them yet, but will still value the areas that have them. If non-warmonger leaders are treating you vehemently for no good reason, either for your territory or borders, then it's a good guess that you're sitting on future riches. |
| 55 | * AllianceMeter: |
| 56 | ** Every game tracks your relationships with other civilizations using one, factoring in both opinions and existing treaties. |
| 57 | ** In ''V'', each city state has one for each full-sized civ. It was refined in the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion to make more sense, with clear delineators for how pissed-off they were at you for doing something like trespassing. |
| 58 | * AlternateTechline: ''VI'''s optional "Tech Shuffle" game mode leads to this. It scrambles the arrangement of technologies within each era, which can lead to things like Computers being researched before Electricity. [[note]] This isn't totally impossible, depending on how broad your definition of a computer is. [[/note]] |
| 59 | * AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Barbarians are universally violent into OmnicidalManiac territory, and unlike other civs, they simply cannot be reasoned with whatsoever. Most of the time, ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption when dealing with Barbarians. |
| 60 | ** Averted with ''VI'''s Barbarian Clans game mode, which allows barbarian camps to eventually become city-states if they aren't destroyed first, as well as allowing a few diplomatic options with them even before this. |
| 61 | * AmbiguouslyBrown: The man and girl (who is also the advisor) in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wBdM__JemI the opening cinematic]] for ''VI'' have generic features that do not indicate any specific ethnicity, allowing them to appear as members of various civs throughout the video. |
| 62 | * AnachronismStew: Somewhat unavoidable in a freeform game that features myriad historical civilizations, many of whom never existed (and in some cases, couldn't possibly have existed) in the same time or place as one another. Add various religions and government styles to the mix and you have a recipe for oddness. Said oddness, however, is a [[RuleOfFun major source of the]] [[AcceptableBreakFromReality game's charm]] after a weirdness adjustment. It leads to [[Film/JesusChristSuperstar Romans with machine guns!]] UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington in a toga! [[StupidJetpackHitler Jetpack Bismarck]]! GANDHI WITH [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons THE BOMB!]] |
| 63 | ** In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''V'', militaristic city-states have the ability to give you unique units that you normally wouldn't have access to if you are their ally. It becomes quite bizarre though when you meet a city-state during the Ancient Era and they tell you that they know the secrets of, say, the [[TankGoodness Panzer]]. That said, they won't actually give you that kind of unit until you research the tech that would normally unlock it. |
| 64 | ** Even the Leader screens, which are ''supposed'' to give the player at least a certain realistic feel for a culture and a time period flub it up occasionally, such as England's Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethI quoting UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill and Austria's Empress UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa eating at ''Neuschwanstein''. |
| 65 | ** While the leaders' themes in ''V'' are often songs that technically originate from the appropriate culture, they sometimes come from a very different period than the rest of the civ's aesthetic. For instance, Darius I's theme, "Morḡ-e saḥar," was written in early 20th century Iran – roughly ''two millennia'' after the decline of his Achaemenid Empire that ''Civ V'' Persia is based upon. |
| 66 | ** Beyond the fact the civilizations' leaders are immortal, there's something bizarrely interesting with Brazil, Portugal and Austria in ''V''. Maria I (leader of Portugal) is Pedro II's (leader of Brazil) paternal great-grandmother while Maria Theresa (leader of Austria) is Pedro II's maternal grandmother. Made even more funny if you are playing as Brazil and one of the adversary civs is Portugal, as Maria I's introduction line is "Have we met before? You look familiar to me... Or maybe not". |
| 67 | ** The opening cutscene for ''VI'' tries to avert HollywoodTactics by having a [=WW2=] infantry charge of well-spread troops covering each other on the run... performed by bayonetless musket-toting Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth soldiers. |
| 68 | ** Using a Roman Legion unit to clear out nuclear contamination in ''VI'' grants you the Achivement "[[LampshadeHanging Missed That Day in History Class]]" |
| 69 | ** ''IV'''s decision to use actual religions can lead to some interesting declarations of followers. Few annoucements are funnier than seeing "UsefulNotes/MaoZedong has converted to Christianity." |
| 70 | * AncestorVeneration: Ancestor Worship is avaibable as a belief for religions that increases Culture from Shrines. |
| 71 | * AndTheAdventureContinues: A rare case where the ''game over screen'' suggests this, at least for most games in the series. [[JustOneMoreTurn They're usually not mistaken.]] |
| 72 | ** ''I'' set the precedent, showing archaeologists discovering the remains of your civilization with an accompanying epilogue. |
| 73 | --->''Centuries later, archeologists discover the remains of your ancient civilization. Evidence of thriving towns, (a technology you discovered), roads, and a centralized government amaze the startled scientists. Finally, they come upon a stone tablet, which contains but one mysterious phrase: "(leader's name) will return!"'' |
| 74 | ** The DOS version of ''I'' ends the game over screen with the brief version of your leader's {{Leitmotif}} before immediately kicking you back to the DOS prompt. The epilogue used in ''I'' also appears in ''II'', but with a first person view of an archaeologist exploring an Egyptian tomb, then discovering the "mysterious phrase" on a nearby wall. |
| 75 | ** In ''V'' this trope appears upon defeat as: |
| 76 | --->''Your Civilization has fallen...but your people do not despair. For they know you will one day return to lead them back to glory.'' |
| 77 | ** The SNES port of ''I'', in addition to the game over sequence mentioned above, has a more direct example of this trope. If you win the game via Domination, the goddess that appeared at the start of the game returns to congratulate you. She tells you that your civilization is about to journey to the stars ... "But the adventure of space is another tale." |
| 78 | * AndYourRewardIsInteriorDecorating: Prevalent in most versions of ''I'', ''II'', and ''III''. In these games, when your civilization hit certain milestones, your civilization's people would spontaneously collaborate to renovate a part of your palace (''I'' and ''III'') or throne room (''II'') as you saw fit. |
| 79 | * AntiAir: Several games in the series have units which fill this role-- |
| 80 | ** In ''I'', Fighters are the ''only'' way to attack air units. |
| 81 | ** In ''II'', Fighters (and Stealth Fighters) are still your only offensive anti-air option, but now they also automatically scramble to defend the city/airbase they're in if it's attacked. Also, AEGIS Cruisers get double defense when attacked by air units--which makes them the toughest sea unit (tougher than even Battleships) in that scenario, which makes them a great anti-air "stack defender" at sea. |
| 82 | ** In ''III'', certain units have an Anti-Aircraft Defense stat. Mobile [=SAMs=] have the highest (4), followed by AEGIS Cruisers (3), then Battleships (2). Jet Fighters also have an Air Superiority ability within a four-tile radius. |
| 83 | ** In ''IV'', certain units with Intercept (Fighters, Jet Fighters, Anti-Tank, Mechanized Infantry, SAM Infantry, Mobile [=SAMs=] and Destroyers) have a percent chance of attacking enemy air units--ranging from 100% (Fighters and Jet Fighters) to 20% (Mechanized Infantry and Anti-Tank). |
| 84 | ** ''V'' and ''VI'', units with the Interception ability automatically attack aircraft which enter their radius of effect. That's Anti-Air Guns and Mobile [=SAMs=] on land; at sea that's Destroyers, Missile Cruisers, and (in ''VI'') Battleships; in the air that's Triplanes (''V'') or Biplanes (''VI''), Fighters, and Jet Fighters. |
| 85 | * AntiFrustrationFeatures: A lot of balancing and changes cleared up issues over time, but some big examples are as follows: |
| 86 | ** One of the biggest jerk moves in Civ games, mostly done by A.I. (though players could do this too) is "forward settling", meaning to settle a city far from your homeland and close to a rival Civ's cities. Most of the time, the only solution was declaring war and conquering it, but that would usually result in other Civs hating you for "warmongering". ''VI'''s ''Rise & Fall'' expansion introduced a mechanic called Loyalty whereby each citizen in each city emits pressure that encourages nearby cities to rebel and join, making forward settling much less attractive as whoever settled the city would likely be unable to keep hold of it. |
| 87 | *** ''III'''s mechanics actually combined to serve a similar function: the further a city was from your capital, the harder it was to keep it happy and productive, and if the city's culture output was overwhelmed by that of a neighbouring civ, it would revolt and join that other civ. |
| 88 | ** ''V'' introduced city-states to the game, and ending a military unit's turn within their borders if you weren't friends or allies would anger them against your trespassing (and boy, did your automated scouts and other units love to trespass). One fortunate exception to this is if your unit ended their turn there because they killed a barbarian unit attacking the city-state, even if the reputation gained was insufficient to advance the reputation to "Friends". |
| 89 | ** ''Gathering Storm'' introduces a grievances/favors system, which quantifies dickish behavior and helpful behavior. Prior to the expansion, the A.I. would tend to label all your wars as aggression, even if you were simply trying to stop a rival Civ from attacking a city-state or converting all your cities to their religion. With the expansion, you get a type of currency that justifies striking out at an antagonistic Civ after you've put up with their abuses for a while. Favors, similarly, is a currency that rewards you for being nice to other civs so you don't run into UngratefulBastard behavior for helping, or at least get something solid to show for it. |
| 90 | * AntiPoopSocking: As of ''IV'', not only does the game offer players the option to have the system time displayed on the UI, it actually has a ''built-in alarm clock function.'' |
| 91 | * AppealToForce: Invoked by the leaders before the negotiations in the first two games: "Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!" Can also show up in ''V''. In fact, the very same quote is sometimes used as a threat. It also can be invoked by the player as well. If you're the first to acquire nuclear weapons in the world, watch and laugh as all of the other lesser nations near you suddenly become afraid or guarded towards you. |
| 92 | ** In ''VI'', Cleopatra likes civilizations with strong militaries over weaker ones. Civs may also be given the randomized "Standing Army", "Great White Fleet", or (in the late-game) "Airpower" Agendas, which make them like civs with large armies, navies, or air forces respectively. |
| 93 | * ArcWords: "Build a civilization to stand the test of time." |
| 94 | * ArtDeco: ''V'' uses this aesthetic for its menus and user interface. |
| 95 | * ArtifactTitle: Despite the series bearing his name, Sid Meier is not the lead designer of any of the games after the first. |
| 96 | * ArmyOfTheAges: |
| 97 | ** The theme for the box art of the ''Warlords'' expansion for ''IV'', [[https://cdn.mobygames.com/covers/4781347-sid-meiers-civilization-iv-warlords-windows-front-cover.jpg depicting two opposing armies about to collide with one another.]] Both armies have forces from the entire span of human history, with the most ancient (two hairy cavemen about to bash each other with heavy rocks) in the foreground, and increasingly more technologically advanced soldiers and vehicles further into the background. |
| 98 | ** Of course, any civilization's armies could turn out like this if they don't keep up with the upgrades. |
| 99 | * ArtificialBrilliance: Sometimes the AI will act like a strategic genius. In II, for example, rival civilizations will only share world maps with you if their attitute toward you is "Worshipful." Since a successful military campaign relies on knowing where your enemies are just as much as it relies on superior troops, the benefits of this strategy are obvious. Also in II, if you ever use spies or diplomats to purchase rival cities, they'll never agree to an alliance with you. And you'll deserve every declaration of war they make. |
| 100 | * ArtificialStupidity: So much over the various installments that all the examples were moved to [[ArtificialStupidity/{{Civilization}} the trope page]]. |
| 101 | * ArtisticLicenseEconomics: Economic systems are tuned for game balance, not realism, so they sometimes produce counter-intuitive effects. |
| 102 | * ArtisticLicenseGeology: In the OpeningNarration of the first game, and by extension, the fourth game, it talks about earthquakes causing tidal waves. Tidal waves, or bores, are caused by the gravitational effects of the Moon and Sun on the Earth's oceans. Earthquakes would cause ''tsunamis'', waves created by the displacement of huge amounts of water in a large body of water. The term 'tidal wave' was once used interchangeably with ''tsunami''; this may be likely around the time the first game was developed. |
| 103 | * ArtisticLicenseHistory: |
| 104 | ** One Civilopedia entry 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. |
| 105 | ** The Civilopedia entry for frigates in ''V'' says: "During the War of 1812 the United States deployed so-called 'super frigates' which carried up to 90 guns," naming USS ''Constitution'' as an example. According to the U.S. Navy's [[https://web.archive.org/web/20170701203833/http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=100&ct=4 own fact file,]] she carried 52 guns during that war. Her sister ships likely had similar armament. A ship carrying 90 guns would have been, at least going by the Royal Navy's system during the Napoleonic Wars, a second-rate ship of the line and not a frigate. |
| 106 | ** In ''VI'', many of the leaders' religious preferences are different than their real-life beliefs: |
| 107 | *** Gandhi's explicit preference for Hinduism makes sense given that Jainism, the other major religion that informed his philosophy, is not one of the twelve available religions in-game. |
| 108 | *** Dido's preference for Judaism is obviously derived from her Punic origins (and to allow one civ leader to prefer Judaism, since the Israelites are not a featured civ), but Dido was certainly not Jewish and neither was Carthage (which practiced Punic polytheism). |
| 109 | *** Harald Hardrada's preference for Protestantism reflects the Reformation which swept Scandinavia nearly half a millennium after he lived. Hardrada was Catholic, though he feuded with the Church during his reign (as did many other Catholic monarchs, then and ever since). |
| 110 | *** The real Kristina of Sweden would no doubt consider her preference for Protestantism a grave insult, since she abdicated her throne and converted to Roman Catholicism. |
| 111 | ** ''VI'' claims that spices were popular historically because they could cover the taste of spoiled food. This makes no sense as spices tended to be extremely expensive, to the point anyone who could buy spices could easily afford fresh food, and even though hygiene standards were less sophisticated in the past, people didn't eat rotting food unless they were desperate ''or'' it being fermented being part of the dish. |
| 112 | * ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: |
| 113 | ** The Civilopedia entry for Writing in ''V'' claims that logographic writing systems have a separate character for each and every word, and require tens of thousands of characters to work. That is true to an extent: logographic systems have a separate symbol for every verb, noun, adjective, and anything in between, but the entry goes on to say "There's a symbol for sheep, and another symbol for a thousand sheep, and yet another symbol for the sound a sheep makes when falling off of a pyramid" which is inaccurate. The confusion mainly comes from the fact that English doesn't combine words often - for example, the German word ''Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften'' might seem to be one really long word, but it's equivalent to English writing ''Insurancecompaniesprovidinglegalprotection''. Is that one word, or is that 5? Thus, in reality they only need around 2000 ~ 3000 characters to write the vast majority of words. |
| 114 | ** In ''II'', Alphabet is a prerequisite for the discovery of writing. Alphabets evolved from other writing systems, so the discovery of writing came first by a margin of millennia. |
| 115 | * ArtisticLicenseMilitary: |
| 116 | ** In every version of the game, the invention of Gunpowder means the immediate advent of Musketeers/Musketmen, with Cannon being invented later. In the real world, the cannon was invented ''first'' since it was easier to make a big gunpowder weapon than a small one. |
| 117 | ** [[NukeEm ICBMs]] strike their targets whole (as in, the entire missile hits). Real life [=ICBMs=] are effectively regular rockets, and they discard booster stages as they run out of fuel. Only the nuclear warhead and its reentry vehicle will reenter the atmosphere. |
| 118 | * ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics: |
| 119 | ** Uranium extracted from mines can directly go into nuclear power plants, nuclear vessels and nuclear bombs. There is no [[RefiningResources process]] to enrich the uranium to be reactor- or weapon-grade or to breed plutonium-239. [[TropesAreTools Of course]], this greatly [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality streamlines the gameplay]]. |
| 120 | ** Uranium is portrayed as a glowing green crystal instead of the yellowish-green (for ore) or gray (for the metal) it really is. |
| 121 | ** Nuclear power plants in ''IV'' can randomly ''explode'', with the ''same effects as a nuclear bomb''. Nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs are completely different things: The way a bomb explodes and the way a reactor fails are complete different |
| 122 | * AscendedExtra: |
| 123 | ** After several games, Austria (among others) finally made its appearance as a playable civilization in the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''V''. Many City-States eventually became full Civilizations and were replaced as city-states to avoid confusion when the related DownloadableContent or expansion was released (Denmark conquering Copenhagen and having two cities with the name, for example). |
| 124 | ** In the DLC for ''VI'', the city-states of Amsterdam, Babylon, Antioch, Seoul, Jakarta, Stockholm, Carthage, Lisbon, Toronto, and Palenque get replaced with new city-states with the introduction of Netherlands, Babylon, Byzantium, Korea, Indonesia, Phoenicia, Portugal, Canada, and Maya as playable civilizations. |
| 125 | ** Also in DLC for ''VI'', Genghis Khan, Aza Nzinga, and Simon Bolivar get replaced as Great Generals with Timur, Amina, and Jose de San Martin with their introductions as leaders. |
| 126 | * AscendedFanboy: Aside from the first game, all the following games have been designed by people other than Sid, who has generally only acted as a supervisory executive producer. Most notable is ''V'', in which the lead designer Jon Shafer came from the modding community and is only around 25 years old. Ed Beach, who was responsible for the two major expansions for ''V'' had a similar background, and became the lead designer of ''VI''. |
| 127 | * AscendedGlitch: Gandhi's love for nukes was originally thought to have been result of a integer overflow bug in the original ''Civilization'', which supposedly resulted in Gandhi, upon adopting Democracy (which reduces a civ's aggression by 2), going from an aggression score of 1 out of 10 to 255 out of 10. However, as Sid Meier notes in his autobiography, the game's programming language could not have produced such an error in the first place, and the company has no record of any playtester ever experiencing the Nuclear Gandhi bug; Meier theorized that the perception of the bug may have been due to India's science-focused playstyle allowing the civ to survive to the end game and discover nukes significantly earlier than others, which would lead to the shock of finding a suddenly nuclear-capable Gandhi threatening other nations. Nevertheless, the urban legend has been born and the memetic impact was such that the developers have been purposefully making him a nuke monger for every major sequel afterward. |
| 128 | ** Apparently when they started tracking where exactly the rumor of this bug first started circulating, they found the likely origin point to be... this very website in 2012. |
| 129 | * AscendedMeme: |
| 130 | ** "Nuclear Gandhi." In ''Civ I'', nuclear powers would boast that "Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!", even Gandhi. This led to his characterization as a nuke-happy psycho, which was acknowledged by ''Civ V'' giving Gandhi's AI a "Use of Nukes" rating of 12 out of 10, and ''Civ VI'' making him more likely to have the "Nuke-Happy" leader agenda. |
| 131 | *** This is further lampshaded in ''VI's Rise and Fall'' expansion with the "I Thought We'd Moved Past This Joke" achievement, which appears when launching a nuclear weapon as India, but with Chandragupta as the leader. |
| 132 | ** ''V'' has three: |
| 133 | *** At the end of the tech tree are [[HumongousMecha Giant Death Robots]], a long running joke on several fansites. |
| 134 | *** From this game onwards, abilities that expand your borders by multiple tiles at once are now explicitly named "Culture Bombs", which was a fan-nickname for using Great Artists in ''IV'' for this purpose. |
| 135 | *** Also, the option to continue playing a game after you won or lost is labeled [[JustOneMoreLevel "Just...one...more...turn"]]. |
| 136 | ** In the period leading up to ''VI'', promotional material teased new civilizations with blurred photos of the leaders. One was suspected by some to be Tamar, leader of the kingdom of Georgia. It ended up being Gorgo of Sparta, but the fervency and unexpectedness of the guess was so amusing it led to the nation becoming a popular guess for ''any'' upcoming civilization... until Tamar and Georgia were officially announced as part of the ''Rise and Fall'' expansion released two years later. |
| 137 | ** The Achievement in ''VI'' for getting a culture victory is named "Buying Your Blue Jeans and Listening to Your Pop Music", after a complaint made by leaders in ''IV'' when players were strong in Culture. In ''V,'' AI leaders make the same complaint when the player becomes culturally influential over them. |
| 138 | ** "Seahenge" is an achievement in ''Civ VI: Gathering Storm.'' It's a reference to how in ''V'', Stonehenge would often appear on the ocean if built in a coastal city. In ''Gathering Storm,'' it's for losing Stonehenge to coastal flooding due to global warming. |
| 139 | ** In ''VI'', Elizabeth I's leader agenda is titled "Trade Agreement" and causes her to dislike leaders that don't trade with her, and her leader ability revolves around strengthening her own trade routes, referencing an [[WelcomeToCorneria infamously repetitive]] voiceline of hers from ''Civ V''. |
| 140 | ** The August 2023 update added achievements for winning the game as leaders from the Leader Pass. The name of Yongle's achievement is, of course, [[https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fizxqaol5a8ma1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D811%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D4e0b0958509da9c74e954709217b2abd96bc903e Live Yongle Reaction]]. |
| 141 | * AsTheGoodBookSays: Literature/TheBible is a very common source for tech quotes in ''IV'' and ''V''--probably the single most common source, particularly for early-game techs. |
| 142 | ** The OpeningNarration from ''I'' and ''IV'' also starts with a paraphrase of the King James Version of [[Literature/BookOfGenesis Genesis 1:2]]. It sets the tone of the narration and gives it an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_evolution "epic of evolution"]] feel. |
| 143 | * AttractMode: The opening sequence of the formation of the Earth and development of life that plays when starting a new game in most other versions is, instead, an attract mode in the SNES port of ''I''. (A different sequence in which your civ's leader is given a MissionFromGod plays when starting a new game.) |
| 144 | * AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Averted with Great Generals and Great Admirals, whose only offensive capability is to make other units stronger. In ''V'', they're {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s, whereas in ''VI'', getting hit by an enemy unit teleports them back to your capital, which can take them out of the fight for quite some time depending on the size of the map and the proximity of the war. |
| 145 | * AutoSave: The first game can autosave every 50 turns, using dedicated autosave slots. Later games give more frequent autosaves. |
| 146 | * AuthorAppeal: Meier is a huge fan of the works of Music/JohannSebastianBach. The first and second games include "J. S. Bach's Cathedral" as a World Wonder, amplifying the unhappiness-negating effect of the Cathedral. |
| 147 | * AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: Easily invoked. An aggressive leader is likely to declare war on you if you have a smaller standing army than they do, and will often preface it by making fun of how weak you are. But if you've been focusing on your economy and technology, you can move to a war footing and start cranking out advanced units to crush your invader and start taking ''their'' cities. This is especially true in ''Civ V'', since occupying captured cities gives a huge happiness penalty until a courthouse is built, which in turn penalizes manufacturing, economy, and combat unit morale, so wars of conquest are impractical and the advantage usually lies with the defender. |
| 148 | * AwesomeButImpractical: |
| 149 | ** The Internet wonder from ''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. |
| 150 | ** The Space Elevator in ''IV'' gives you a big boost to spaceship construction. The problem is that it's expensive and requires a tech not needed for the spaceship--not to mention you ''have'' to build it in a city near the equator! You're usually better off building another spaceship part in its place. |
| 151 | ** The Great Colossus wonder in ''V'' used to be this. It had a nice benefit that 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. |
| 152 | ** 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 valuable uranium, which could be used on the earlier and quicker-to-build nuclear options. |
| 153 | ** Due to their almost pedantic requirements, most of the Wonders in ''VI'' are like this. While they provide often valuable bonuses, it takes a ''very'' specific spot on the map to even build them. Also, it can easily reach the point where not having the wonder provides more than sacrificing everything just to get it in place. |
| 154 | ** Nearly all the wonders in ''Civ Rev'' get this treatment barring the East India Company, which is always good and very powerful. In a game that runs at such a fast pace (193 turns max, and most games can be decided in 60 or less by a decent player) nearly all of them are just too expensive to build in the relatively short amount of time you have to devote to frivolous endeavors; even the decent ones are only situational useful instead of strong enough to justify always trying for, and most eventually go obsolete to boot. Special mention goes to the Apollo Program: it instantly hands you all technologies that remain un-researched in the game... which would be great if it wasn't unlocked by the ''penultimate'' technology requiring most of the others in the first place, and that ALSO unlocks the Technological victory option by itself (an oversight perhaps, you DO NOT have to build Apollo to go to space, you only need the Space Flight tech which unlocks all the spaceship parts at once), making the wonder largely pointless. |
| 155 | * AxCrazy: ''UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi'' is incredibly nuke-happy. In the first game, this was falsely claimed to be down to a bug in the AI's coding, which made Gandhi almost certain to declare war if he adopted a peaceful form of government like Democracy; but in subsequent games it has been retained for the sheer comedy value. In ''V'', despite being very reluctant to start wars unprovoked, Gandhi will rain nukes on you if you're a warmonger, as his AI has a hardcoded Nuke Production and Use of Nukes rating of 12; the maximum rating otherwise is ''10''. |
| 156 | ** In ''VI'', he's back with a vengeance. Every leader has a constant agenda and a random "hidden" agenda, and each leader has a specific agenda that have a high likelihood to be their random agenda. Gandhi, aside from having the face agenda of "Peacekeeper", [[http://kotaku.com/gandhi-is-still-an-asshole-in-civilization-vi-1788710568 also tends to be biased toward "Nuke Happy"]], making him extremely passive-aggressive and temperamental. |
| 157 | * BadassBoast: |
| 158 | ** The opening narrations for many of the civs in ''V'' have at least one of these, such as the Huns': |
| 159 | --->''"Fearsome General, your people call for the recreation of a new Hunnic Empire, one which will make the exploits and histories of the former seem like the faded dreamings of a dying sun."'' |
| 160 | ** Sometimes when an AI declares war on you, they'll tell you about how they're trying to attempt a Domination Victory. And they're every bit as boastful as you'd think they would be. |
| 161 | --->"You are merely a stepping-stone on my grand ascent to world domination!"\ |
| 162 | "Now is the time for my master plan to commence. You will now die like the rest of these fools." |
| 163 | ** And, of course: |
| 164 | --->"My words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!" |
| 165 | * BarbarousBarbaryBandits: The Barbary Corsair is the Ottoman's unique unit in ''VI'', replacing the generic Privateer available to other civilizations. Compared to the Privateer, they are cheaper and cost no movement points to perform coastal raids. |
| 166 | * BearsAreBadNews: Bears are the greatest menace to early explorers in ''IV''... at least until the roving barbarians get their hands on bronze weaponry. |
| 167 | * BenevolentArchitecture: If you or the AI is playing a Civ that has bonuses in certain terrain, the game will generally place you in said terrain. For example, in ''III'' if your civilization had the Seafaring trait, you will always start near the sea, and in ''V'', the Celts (who get bonus faith from forests) and the Iroquois (who can travel through forests as if they were roads) will start near plenty of forest. |
| 168 | * BeingGoodSucks: Diplomacy is rather useless when playing ''I'' as, '''95% of the time''', the computer will threaten you with demands for free technology or money, even if their military power is non-existent. Without the Great Wall or the U.N., there is a very rare chance that they'll offer a peace treaty with you. (See ChronicBackstabbingDisorder below.) |
| 169 | ** In ''Civ Rev'', it's largely better to bully the AI and hamper them as much as possible, since diplomacy is so simplified in the first place as to not allow many options and ALL of the AIs WILL declare war on you eventually; it's not a matter of "if" but "when," even for the ridiculously stoic Alexander of Greece. Playing nice generally just gives them more map control, money, freedom to expand, etc. while the most you get out of it is... selling techs to them for a pittance of gold in the window of time they choose to remain non-hostile. |
| 170 | * {{BFS}}: Broadswordsmen fall into this category. |
| 171 | * BigNever: The choice to defy a [=UN=] resolution in ''IV''. |
| 172 | * BilingualBonus: |
| 173 | ** Leaders in ''V'' speak in their native languages, but what they say usually doesn't exactly match the text box. Their actual lines tend to be either more poetic or more insulting than what is written out. |
| 174 | *** This also applies to George Washington and Elizabeth, who both speak English. Their speech also does not match what is written. Example: Elizabeth will have a large trade offer down in the window and will only speak "Would you be interested in a trade agreement with England?" |
| 175 | ** A less noteworthy example occurs in ''Civ IV'' where the units speak short phrases in their native language. However, there is not as much of a bonus except for the odd idiom, as most of them are direct translations of what the English and American units say--although that can create a different bonus in the form of unintentionally funny unidiomatic translations. |
| 176 | ** The lyrics to ''Baba Yetu'', the menu theme from ''Civ IV'', are actually the Lord's Prayer in Swahili. |
| 177 | ** In ''Civ VI'', Catherine de' Medici speaks French with a slight Italian accent, unless she's agitated. If so, she switches to her native Italian, complete with Florentine cadence. Similarly, Gandhi switches to English whenever he's angry. |
| 178 | ** Despite potentially being the leader of either England or France, Eleanor of Aquitaine speaks neither English nor French, but rather her native language of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_language Occitan]], which is still spoken in that region to this day. |
| 179 | * BlatantLies: Leaders may claim that "this is nowhere close to a fair deal" even when it's plainly obvious that you're making a one-to-one exchange. The idea of a "fair deal" they subsequently propose will be something that's clearly slanted in their favour. This has to do with how much they like you, but if you do nothing to appease them they'll just demand more and more from you. |
| 180 | ** In ''Civ IV'', a leader may propose a trade, then if you attempt to edit the deal, but decide to stick with the initial trade, sometimes the AI says things like, "It's highway robbery, but we'll take it." |
| 181 | ** In ''Civ Rev'', AIs will eventually stop selling techs to you under the guise of not knowing anything you don't already have (quote "Our People are proud but ignorant, you'll have to seek knowledge elsewhere...") despite the fact you can see their total (real-time) tech total in the diplomacy window. When Mao Zedong has 13 techs and you have 8, it's kind of hard to believe he isn't holding out on you... |
| 182 | ** Potentially from the player in ''Civ V''. When reprimanded for constructing archaeological digs within another civ's borders, this is one of your responses: |
| 183 | --->We meant no offense when we were trying to take your cultural heritage. |
| 184 | * BloodKnight: Back in the first game, when two civilizations shared each color, players often picked certain civs just to be sure they wouldn't ever encounter the more psychotic "twin" like the Aztecs or Zulu. |
| 185 | ** Even in ''V'', you're in for a rough early-game if you end up bordering the aforementioned Aztecs and Zulu, as well as the Huns, Mongols, and (pre-''Brave New World'') Japanese. Oddly enough, the often-demonized Babylon is one of the nicest civs in any game ever. |
| 186 | * BlowGun: In ''Revolution'', one of the barbarian tribes you can encounter has a spokesman who threatens you with a blow gun. |
| 187 | * BoldExplorer: Later games in the series often have a dedicated unit, usually called something like the Scout or the Explorer, whose purpose is to quickly and cheaply uncover unknown bits of the world without having to commit an often-expensive military unit to the same job. |
| 188 | * BoltOfDivineRetribution: In ''VI'', theological combat, a representation of religious conflict within a region, is manifested by one religious unit summoning a thundercloud which blasts the opposition. |
| 189 | * BornUnderTheSail: In ''Civilization V'', the Polynesians have an unique ability to embark on the ocean way earlier than any other civilization. In ''Civilization VI'', the Norwegians gain a similar ability. Taken up to its logical conclusion by the Maori in ''VI'''s ''Gathering Storm'' expansion, as they start out in the ocean and gain appropriate bonuses for doing so. |
| 190 | * BreadAndCircuses: In the ''Rise and Fall'' expansion of ''VI'', cities with an entertainment district can enact a "bread and circuses" project to instill extra loyalty in the region and prevent cities from rebelling. |
| 191 | * BribingYourWayToVictory: |
| 192 | ** Diplomats and Spies can do this--it is possible to pay enough gold so that enemy cities willingly defect to your civilization. |
| 193 | ** Bribing the AI is a very important part of the diplomatic strategy in ''IV''. Getting someone to jump in on your side during a war (or begging them to stay out) can make all the difference. |
| 194 | ** Venice in ''V'' specializes in this. Venice is not allowed to found or conquer any cities, but gets huge bonuses to gold income. The easiest way to win is to buy the loyalty of every city state and have them vote you the world leader. |
| 195 | ** ''Brave New World'' in ''V'' adds in an option to buy spaceship parts with gold if you choose a certain ideology. Now instead of having to build all the spaceship parts which you can only do when you've unlocked the relevant tech one can simply save up money beforehand and buy all of them. |
| 196 | * BrownNote: Each civilization has music that plays when you engage in diplomacy with them; ''[=Civ4=]'' made this EvolvingMusic by having the song change as the years went by. [[https://youtu.be/JB4i7qLykM0 Babylon's third theme]] starts with two trumpet blasts that are ''sliiightly'' out of key with each other. |
| 197 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: The culture advisor in ''Civ II'' is an Elvis impersonator who gives all of his advice in a ridiculous Elvis voice...and generally makes pretty solid points. |
| 198 | * {{Cap}}: In the earliest game, resources never ran out. In ''III'', they have a small % chance of disappearing ''every'' turn, even if you just started using them last turn, leading to annoying scenarios like them running out at the most inconvenient time possible. ''V'' is the first game with this trope; how many copies of a resource now 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. |
| 199 | * CapRaiser: In the ''Gathering Storm'' expansion for ''Civilization VI'', constructing buildings from the Encampment district like Barracks and Armories increases the maximum capacity of your strategic resources like Iron and Oil. |
| 200 | * CartoonBomb: |
| 201 | ** Used by Grenadiers in ''IV''. Seeing as Cartoon Bombs are modeled after early cast-iron, black-powder grenades, this is [[JustifiedTrope not surprising]]. |
| 202 | ** The icon on the Culture Bomb button in vanilla ''V'' (it was removed in the expansions) is a cartoon bomb. |
| 203 | * ChallengeRun: |
| 204 | ** So many people enjoyed limiting themselves to just one city that it has become an option under advanced setup since ''IV''. ''Brave New World'' would take it even further when they introduced Venice, a civilization that can't build settlers or annex cities. |
| 205 | ** ''Civilization IV'' has the "Always War" challenge, where you are perpetually at war with every other civilization. On the other hand, there's also "Always Peace," which is also ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: No [=AIs=] will declare war on you, but you can't declare war on anyone. |
| 206 | * ChaosArchitecture: In ''I'' through ''IV'', cities radically change their layouts over time as new buildings/wonders are added, often shifting around the existing wonders to make room. ''V'' makes it a little more realistic by only showing the city itself expanding without being close enough to see the actual buildings, and wonders remain in one place for the entire game. |
| 207 | * CharacterDrivenStrategy: Gandhi will be a pacifist, while Montezuma is aggressive. |
| 208 | * ChooseAHandicap: In ''V'', the "Fall of Rome" scenario turns Culture and Social Policies against you if you're playing as Rome. To simulate the many factors that led to the decline of the Roman empire, the Roman policy tree contains only unhelpful policies such as Barbarian Conscription (-10% combat strength), Neglected Infrastructure (less Gold from city connections), and Popular Ennui (Luxury Resources provide less happiness). Though you can still choose which social policies to adopt as usual, policy skipping is disabled, meaning you must choose one every time you generate enough Culture for one. Oh, and did we mention you can't sell your Culture-producing buildings in this mode? |
| 209 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: |
| 210 | ** In ''II'', the foreign adviser occasionally suggests the ''player'' do this to the other nations. |
| 211 | ** Fairly common in ''V'', to the point that the dialogue was eventually updated to show when the AI does it. Once you've been at war with them, you can expect another one 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 a UN Vote. |
| 212 | ** 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 even when you really aren't]]), you ''will'' be attacked. |
| 213 | ** The AI has particularly never taken into account industrial strength, wealth, and internal logistics as relevant to military affairs. Sure, you don't have a lot of strong units ''now'', but in five turns, with your economy on a war footing... Suffice it to say, it's very easy to pull a "United States/Soviet Union in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII" in this game. |
| 214 | ** The AI combines this with ArtificialStupidity with alliances to declare war, particularly in ''III''; if given enough money, it's not uncommon to see an AI sign an agreement to declare war on a civilization it's very friendly with, or a civilization it just signed peace with, or sign peace with a civilization it just signed an alliance against, or sign an alliance with one civ to declare war on a second civ, then immediately sign peace with that second civ and sign an alliance against the first civ, to the point that sufficiently large ''Civilization III'' games often devolve into chaotic world wars with the AI's all switching sides every couple of turns. It's less true in later games, but you'll still see this sort of behavior to a much lesser extent from time to time. |
| 215 | * ChewingTheScenery: Some quotes in ''V'' where it's called for. For example: |
| 216 | -->'''Horse Riding:''' "[[ShoutOutToShakespeare A horse! A horse! My]] '''[[Theatre/RichardIII kingdom]]''' [[Theatre/RichardIII for a horse!]]" |
| 217 | * ChurchMilitant: Your chosen faith under Theocracy. |
| 218 | * CityPeopleEatSushi: In ''IV: Beyond the Sword'', Sid Sushi Co, while giving less food when incorporated than Cereal Mills, gives a good amount of culture per turn, echoing the stereotype of sushi being fancier. |
| 219 | * ComebackMechanic: |
| 220 | ** In earlier games, The Great Library (of Alexandria) wonder allowed to get for free ''any'' technology that was already known or researched later by at least two other civs. Building it allowed for catching up over any given technological gap and was often worth rushing toward to ''outpace'' the competition. |
| 221 | ** In ''I'' and ''II'', conquering a city of a more advanced civ instantly grants a single, randomly selected technology that they know and the attacking civ lacks. This was a double-edged sword, since AI (''already'' cheating with research) could easily catch-up with human players when their cities were poorly defended. |
| 222 | ** There is a single wonder in every game in the series that grants one or two instantly researched technologies when built. Getting it allows to either cement your tech lead ''or'' to catch up when lagging behind. |
| 223 | ** Espionage is designed to help civs that are lagging behind the technology race. In ''V'' in particular, once any civ reaches the Renaissance ''every'' civ gets their first spy and the main use of that spy is to steal technology. Stealing technology is much faster than researching it, ensuring that a player snowballing Science can't get too out of control. |
| 224 | ** The World Congress in ''VI'' with ''Gathering Storm'' will eventually start holding votes to award or remove Diplomatic Victory Points, which can let civilizations who aren't winning band together to drag down the civilization who is and give them a chance to win instead. If the vote would win the leading civilization the game you can count on every other civilization voting against them. |
| 225 | * ComicBookTime: |
| 226 | ** 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 (until ''V''). |
| 227 | ** You may notice that over the course of a game, each turn slowly changes from taking around 100 years (during the BC period) to just 1 (around the 19th or 20th century). This means it can take ''1000'' years to build just ''one'' barracks early game, but a city only takes a ''few years'' to build ''every'' structure in the late game. |
| 228 | * ACommanderIsYou: Starting with ''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. |
| 229 | * TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: There are enough examples for [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard/{{Civilization}} a dedicated subpage]]. |
| 230 | * TheComputerIsALyingBastard: |
| 231 | ** Most games will claim to have their "Normal" difficulty give the human players and the AI equal advantages. Not even close. |
| 232 | ** In ''V'', civ leaders with high Deceptive ratings can literally lie to you. For example, a leader's status might claim that they're Friendly when they're really about to declare war on you. |
| 233 | * TheComputerShallTauntYou: If another civilization considers itself superior to you, they'll let you know it, and they can be quite smug and condescending. |
| 234 | ** In general, diplomacy dialogue in both ''I'' and ''II'' gave other civilizations a never-ending air of smug condescension regardless of the circumstances. Even if they want to trade technology with you, they'll start off by saying "We note that your primitive civilization has not even discovered" whatever technology they want to trade. |
| 235 | ** In ''V'', one of the generic insults you might receive: "Ah, it's always nice to see my favorite city-state again." |
| 236 | * ConservationOfNinjutsu: ''VI'' will eventually allow you to combine two of the same type of unit into a Corps, and later three into an Army. One of these is stronger than an individual composing unit, but weaker than using the two or three separately. |
| 237 | * CoolVersusAwesome: ''Civilization'' is a game where some of the greatest leaders in history go head-to-head in a battle for world domination. Genghis Khan versus George Washington! Alexander the Great versus Catherine the Great! Nebuchadnezzar II versus Napoleon Bonaparte! |
| 238 | * CopyProtection: In the first game, there would be two instances in the early parts of the game where you had to look up a civilization advance in the manual. You were shown a picture of a random one, then given a large set of multiple-choice answers of which two advances were its direct prerequisites. (The in-game justification was that "A usurper claims you are not the rightful king!") If you were wrong, you lost all the military units you had outside of your cities, but could still continue the game. |
| 239 | ** Ironically, all the advances were also documented in the ''in-game'' Civilopedia (but you couldn't check it ''as'' you were being asked), and even if you didn't read that, the answers could often be worked out logically anyway. It would ask you things like "Which advance requires knowledge of Steam Engine and Bridge Building?" (Uh... could it be Railroad? Ya think?) And even the less obvious ones were easy to memorize after you'd played the game a few times. |
| 240 | * CosmeticAward: Improving your palace in the original ''Civilization'', your throne room in ''II'', and your castle in ''III'' was awesome, but never had any actual impact on gameplay. The gimmick was dropped from ''IV'' onwards. |
| 241 | * TheCoverChangesTheMeaning: In ''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 [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethI Elizabeth I]], etc.) There are two arrangements for each tune--one for when you are at peace with the civ, and one when you are at war. The wartime tunes often change a decidedly pleasant and uplifting tune into something sinister. |
| 242 | * CrapsackWorld: [[https://www.pcgamer.com/ten-year-game-of-civ-2-results-in-hellish-nightmare-planet-permanent-nuclear-war/ One player]] kept a game going for ''ten years'' as an experiment. He discovered, rather disturbingly, that the game seems to just naturally descend into a dystopian nightmare if it goes on long enough. |
| 243 | ** [[HopeSpot Things started looking up, as one of the three factions locked in a]] ForeverWar [[HopeSpot was eventually wiped out, pollution finally started to clean back up, and populations started to climb globally.]] |
| 244 | ** [[spoiler:[[DownerEnding ...until it was revealed that the player in question]] [[MoralEventHorizon deliberately steered the world back into a polluted, nuclear radiation-littered hellhole]] locked in a ForeverWar, all just to justify the continuation of his own [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Orwellian]] [[DownerEnding authoritarian rule.]]]] |
| 245 | * CreatorCameo: Sid himself appears in multiple games-- |
| 246 | ** In ''I'', Sid's the one to announce when your civilization discovers new technology. At first he'll appear as a Greco-Roman scholar, but once you reach a certain tech level he'll instead be in a laboratory wearing a LabcoatOfScienceAndMedicine. |
| 247 | ** Sid Meier formally acts as your science advisor in ''III''. |
| 248 | ** In ''IV'', Sid presides over the in-game tutorial, this time wearing a dark blue polo shirt with the Firaxis Games logo on it. |
| 249 | * CreatorProvincialism: Creator/{{Koei}} handled the porting of the SNES version of ''I''. As a part of this port, they swapped out Shaka and the Zulus with Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Japanese. In addition, the opening sequence--which had been turned into an AttractMode for this version--centers on Japan as the Earth develops, rather than Africa. |
| 250 | * CrimeOfSelfDefense: The primary means of preventing civilizations from converting your cities in ''VI'' is theological combat. Winning theological combat exerts religious pressure on all nearby cities, which often tends to aggravate nearby civilizations because the ''defender'' is accidentally converting them. This can lead to denunciations and even war with your neighbors because of a third party throwing Apostle after Apostle at you to try to convert your cities. |
| 251 | * CripplingOverspecialization: Submarines are very powerful against other ships, but without giving them one-use missiles, they can't attack land targets. |
| 252 | ** Averted in ''VI''--submarines (and their advanced Nuclear Sub counterparts) are now quite capable of bombarding cities and land-units, and even destroying Improvements... in fact, due to their special ability (being invisible to anything more than one hex away), they're GREAT for it, since they can easily avoid counterattacks by keeping out to sea. |
| 253 | * CriticalExistenceFailure: Mostly played straight, but some versions of the game avert this by reducing the movement points and/or combat power of heavily damaged units. In ''V'', which averts it for most civs, it's actually the Japanese civilization's unique perk -- their units don't get reduced stats for being damaged. |
| 254 | * {{Crossover}}: The ''Brave New World'' expansion for ''V'' features the [[VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown XCOM Squad]], an upgraded Paratrooper that can use their Skyrangers to move up to 40 hexes in one turn[[note]]Paratroopers can only move 9 hexes per turn[[/note]] and have plasma weaponry that gives them a chance against the [[HumongousMecha Giant Death Robot]]. Note that this is not an example of DemographicDissonantCrossover as despite ''V'' being rated E10+ and the game the unit is originally from is M-rated, ''V'', as with the rest of the ''Civilization'' series, is targeted to an older demographic. |
| 255 | -->'''Unit Description:''' Good luck, Commander! |
| 256 | * CrutchCharacter: |
| 257 | ** Expansionist civilizations are able to explore the map faster and get better bonuses from the goody huts. This makes them excellent at getting a head start in the beginning of the game, but are only worth using if the player can keep that lead. In ''Civ III'' they even get a special, starting scout unit for this very purpose. |
| 258 | ** In ''Civ I'', the Colossus Wonder. The city that builds it gets double the science output, helping Advancement research tremendously. However, researching Electricity deactivates it, but by that point more than half the tech tree should be researched. |
| 259 | ** Also in ''Civ I'', the Pyramid Wonder. It allows the nation that built it to switch to any type of government, even if the respective technology hasn't been researched yet. It's deactivated by Communism, but by that point the player will likely have researched all the government types anyway. |
| 260 | * CulturalPosturing: The Cultural Victory consists of developing your civ's culture to a point where it's impossible for the opposition to catch up. In ''Civ V'' vanilla, this involved building the Utopia Project once you've completed the required number of Policy Trees. In "Brave New World" and ''Civ VI'', the mechanic was changed to building up enough Culture (your "defense") and Tourism (your "attack") for the holiday makers from the other civs to conclude that your culture is just better. After all, if everybody wears your blue jeans and listens to your rock music, you can say you've conquered the world... in a manner of speaking. |
| 261 | * CultureChopSuey: To emphasize how they're not supposed to be any one specific race, the narrator and his son in the opening cinematic of ''V'' live in Mongol gers decorated with West African instruments and shields and wear Celtic/Arabic clothing, and the narrator is voiced by a British actor. |
| 262 | ** Some of the game's civilisations are this as well, based on multiple related (or unrelated) cultures mashed together, such as the Celts, the Polynesians, or the Native Americans (none of these peoples were at any point a completely unified civilisation, and Native Americans do not even have that many similarities in language or culture to begin with). |
| 263 | * CurbStompBattle: |
| 264 | ** Alarmingly common in ''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 civilization with five [[TankGoodness Modern Armor units]]. 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 [[HeroicSecondWind back to full strength immediately the next turn]]. In other words, ''[[CameBackStrong attacking them only makes them stronger]].'' |
| 265 | ** The ''Gods & Kings'' expansion has lowered the effect to only heal up to 50 HP (5 HP in the vanilla system). It also made cities quite a bit sturdier, with defensive buildings increasing the city's max health in addition to their combat rating. |
| 266 | ** In the same game, garrisoning a unit in a city is a double-edged sword. While it does add the unit's strength to the city, it also means that if the city has been bombarded down to zero HP, then it doesn't matter whether the next attacker is a Spearman or the defender is a [[strike:[[RunningGag Tank]]]] Giant Death Robot; the latter is going to die when the city is captured. |
| 267 | ** In the same game, being the first to open an ideology gives you a bonus tenet. Also, reaching the Modern Era lets you unlock an ideology without finding coal or building factories. Conveniently, there is ''one path'' across the Industrial Era that only requires three technologies- Scientific Theory, Electricity, Radio. As a result, you can get 6 Modern Infantry with 40 combat strength when most people have crossbows as their strongest units... with only 22 strength. |
| 268 | ** A mechanic in ''Civ Rev'': if your battle odds are 7:1 in favour on the attack, it's an Overrun, and the defending unit cries out in terror and flees with accompanying sound effect. Note that sometimes the unit can't animate itself away, and you still have to sit there watching your tank corps annihilate a squad of spearmen. (The Zulu have a special ability here: they win at 4:1.) |
| 269 | * {{Cutscene}}: The Wonders get them. In ''II'' these [[FullMotionVideo were made of]] StockFootage, while later games have renders. ''V'' used artistic still-images with an attached quote instead, but ''VI'' went back to cutscenes - in this case, a sped-up animation of the wonder being built and activating. |
| 270 | [[/folder]] |
| 271 | |
| 272 | [[folder:Tropes D-G]] |
| 273 | * DamageOverTime: In ''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 games removed this. |
| 274 | * DamnYouMuscleMemory: |
| 275 | ** In ''I'' and ''II'', Democracy was a linear upgrade of Republic and, in many ways, the best government in the game, as it removed corruption out of the picture and offered gigantic economic bonuses. ''III'' reworked how governments operate significantly, making Democracy a virtually useless time and money sink to even research it, outside of a tiny handful of situations. But since previous two games made Democracy so damn good, many people straight-out beelined for it. |
| 276 | ** ''V'' has a pretty bad one as the start of the game. In ''IV'', you would select "Play Now", choose your options (civilization, map, etc), and start the game. In ''V'', selecting "Play Now" takes you directly to the initial loading screen without giving a chance to change the options, perplexing given that most players would want to take a second to confirm their settings before starting a game that takes many hours to complete, unless they're "re-rolling" a new map. |
| 277 | *** Ed Beach, lead designer of ''Civilization VI'', [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/22/yes-civ-vis-lead-designer-totally-wanted-to-mess-with-the-way-you-play/ deliberately]] made mechanics different enough that things players would normally do were no longer a good strategy. |
| 278 | * DareToBeBadass: "Do you have what it takes to build a civilization to stand the test of time?" |
| 279 | * DarkerAndEdgier: In-game, the modern/contemporary era in ''IV'' has an noticeably darker atmosphere, the soundtrack selection coming across as more brooding and ominous if not outright apocalyptic compared to the previous time periods. This is chiefly because the music selection comes entirely from the Minimalist music of John Coolidge Adams (b. 1947). Minimalism has an emphasis on the repetitive; this can go several directions, and Adams prefers to go for "hauntingly beautiful." |
| 280 | * DeadArtistsAreBetter: Across all six instalments, only two individuals have ever been depicted while they were still alive: UsefulNotes/SteveJobs (a Great Merchant in ''IV'' and ''V'') and Prince Buster (a Great Musician in ''V''). Justified in that dead artists are also much, ''much'' more numerous, and generally much easier to depict without running into legal issues. |
| 281 | * DefeatMeansFriendship: In the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''Civ V'', all civs get access to the Privateer (the Dutch get the Sea Beggar instead), which has a chance of recruiting any naval unit it defeats. |
| 282 | ** The Ottomans can do this with any naval combat unit. |
| 283 | ** In the fan-made [=NiGHTS=] mod (no relation to [[VideoGame/NiGHTSIntoDreams that NiGHTS]]), every civ can recruit barbarians with any unit. |
| 284 | ** Germany in ''V'' has a chance to do this with defeated barbarians as part of their shtick. |
| 285 | * DeathFromAbove: Comes in many flavors, most commonly bombers and nuclear strikes. |
| 286 | * DeathOfAThousandCuts: |
| 287 | ** In ''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. |
| 288 | ** In ''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. |
| 289 | ** 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. |
| 290 | *** This is fixed with the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion, in which units have 100 HP and damage values are adjusted to fit the new scale. It's still possible to do so, though certainly not quite to the same degree as before. |
| 291 | ** City sieges in any game can sometimes turn into this, especially if they have a lot of defensive buildings and/or a strong garrison. |
| 292 | ** This is an effective strategy in ''Civ: Rev'' as the Spanish, utilizing mass single Legion units combined with naval support (which is boosted indirectly by one of their civ unique bonuses) to weaken much stronger defending armies through volume attacks intended to chip them down into a killable range of defending power. With enough Legion units, you can take down pikemen ''armies''(a powerful defensive unit a tier above Legions) note that armies are 3x as strong as individual units that comprise them and pikemen (3) are already stronger than Legions (2) individually. |
| 293 | * DeadpanSnarker: ''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. |
| 294 | ** By way of example, its entry for Fascism reads: |
| 295 | --->''This form of government was quite popular in [[ThoseWackyNazis certain states in Central Europe]] during the last century but other states didn't much like it, and it was ultimately abandoned after [[UsefulNotes/WorldWar2 some unpleasantness]].'' |
| 296 | ** Some of the leader dialogue can get pretty snarky. Especially when they are declaring war. |
| 297 | --->'''Gandhi:''' I have just been informed that a large number of our soldiers have entered your territory. I strongly recommend a campaign of passive resistance as the best way to defeat them. |
| 298 | * DemotedToExtra[=/=]AscendedExtra: |
| 299 | ** Brennus and the Celts are demoted from a playable faction in ''III'' and ''IV'' to being AI-only barbarians in ''Revolution'', and then brought back (under Boudicca) with the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''V''. |
| 300 | ** The Babylonians, a mainstay of the first three games (and one of the easiest civilizations for new players to start with, given their religious and scientific bonuses) are not featured in ''IV'' until the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion. In ''V'', they are only made available through DownloadableContent. |
| 301 | ** The Sioux were playable in ''II'' and were part of the "Native American" civilization in ''IV'' as their leader, Sitting Bull, but they were missing in ''III'' and ''V'' . |
| 302 | ** Various historical figures who led civilizations in previous games are only featured as minor figures in later ones. For example, UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, [[UsefulNotes/NotableSwedishMonarchs Gustavus Adolphus]], and UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}} - who led France, Sweden, and the Celts respectively in ''V'' - only appear as Great Generals in ''VI''. |
| 303 | ** After becoming a full-fledged civilization in ''V'', Venice was demoted to a regular city-state in ''VI''. |
| 304 | *** A number of other cities belonging to previously playable civilizations showed up as city-states in ''VI'' (Babylon, [[UsefulNotes/{{Portugal}} Lisbon]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Netherlands}} Amsterdam]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}} Jakarta]], [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea Seoul]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Sweden}} Stockholm]]) though these were all replaced when their respective civs were slowly [[TheBusCameBack phased back into the game]]. |
| 305 | * DiagonalSpeedBoost: In every game up to ''V'', which is played on hex tiles. ''VI'' would follow in ''V'''s footsteps. |
| 306 | * DifficultButAwesome: |
| 307 | ** Aiming for the Domination or Conquest victory fits into this bill in many of the games. Invading other people's cities and annexing them (or RapePillageAndBurn or, in ''V'', making puppet states out of them) fits the bill. It's fun to conquer every single city, but it requires a lot of micromanagement and strategy with your units. You're also going to have to deal with a lot of unhappiness due to overpopulation, angry citizens from occupied cities and city-states, and having diplomatic relations completely cut off and every civilization declare war on you for your war-mongering attitude. This is why "military based civilizations" (i.e. Mongols, Aztecs, Huns, and the Japanese) are considered to be a high-risk/high-reward type of civilization. |
| 308 | ** The entire point of Wonders is they are expensive to produce: other people may beat you to building one (meaning you wasted all your effort) and time spent building one could have been better spent making lots of conventional forces. But if you finish it, you get something pretty awesome that changes how you play the game. |
| 309 | ** Getting a Cultural Victory via Tourism in ''Brave New World'' requires a lot of planning, both to get the right Great Works at the right time and getting the aforementioned Wonders, but do it right and you can get the rest of the world to concede the superiority of your culture without firing a shot. |
| 310 | * DiscOneNuke: Many units are superbly strong when you first get them, but are eventually outclassed as technology continues. In ''III'' for example, the Swordsman boasts 3 attack and 2 defence and is the pinnacle of Ancient Times military technology, but once you get to the Middle Ages, Knights can outspeed them, Longbowmen outdamage them, Pikemen can stand up to them, and Swordsmen can't upgrade into more powerful units (exceptin the ''Conquests'' expansion, where they upgrade to Medieval Infantry, which can beat any other contemporary foot unit they attack in open ground). You can also of course rush to a technology with intent to get a leg up on opponents with a new unit they aren't prepared to deal with, but of course that won't last. |
| 311 | ** Even more obvious for civs with strong Unique Units in ''V'', who ''will'' eventually obsolete and be replaced by something better - and available for everyone. Some units will still keep an edge (Chu-ko-nus keep the [[MoreDakka two-shots upgrade once they become Gatling Guns]], while Longbowmen become Gatling Guns with +1 range), other will be brought down to normal (Keshiks or Camel Archers lose their ranged attack, Battering Rams or Siege Towers their huge bonuses against cities...). The most obvious case may be the Zulu Impi, who loses its double attack when upgraded ''and'' the access to the +1 movement promotion once you gain access to Riflemen. |
| 312 | ** Subverted by Polish Hussars, who boast rather nasty unique ability transferable through entire anti tank chain and can be upgraded from Landsknechts, purchasable unit enabled by social policy. Thus, even when Hussars get 'obsoleted' by Anti-tank gun and can no longer be trained directly, they still remain crucial step in creating devilish combo known as Winged Gunknechts, which turns rather underperforming Gunship into walking calamity that creates absolute mayhem behind enemy lines by pillaging everything in reach and disrupting movements of enemy troops. |
| 313 | ** The Horseman units in Civ Rev are ridiculously powerful for their era. Unlocked by a basic technology that would only take you 5 turns to research, each horseman costs twice as much as the basic warrior unit but has double the attack power. More importantly, they have twice as many movement points, meaning they can cross the map and bring this power to bear ''very'' quickly. Horse armies are completely effective even on the highest difficulty of Deity and define most multiplayer matchups, as players are never truly safe from the threat they pose until they get ''pikemen'', a unit unlocked by a mid-game tech! Much of the civ tier ranking in Revolution relates to how quickly each can field horse armies or what special bonuses they have that enhance their application. |
| 314 | * DisproportionateRetribution: While spies getting caught does result in international incidents, declaring war over catching one might be going a bit far. You can do so. |
| 315 | * {{Doomsayer}}: Included in ''VI'''s Apocalypse game mode in the form of the Soothsayer, a special religious unit who can travel into enemy territory and "predict" an impending natural disaster. |
| 316 | * DoubleEdgedBuff: A civilization suffering a Dark Age can enact special Policies that grant a [[ComebackMechanic major boost to one aspect of its development]] at the cost of a substantial penalty or hindrance -- for example, "Elite Forces" gives all your units [[ExperienceBooster double XP]] but raises their maintenance costs. |
| 317 | * DoWellButNotPerfect: It's up to the [=RNG=], but in quite a few situations, particularly in ''V'', it's better for your unit to take an enemy unit down to very low HP instead of outright destroying it. This is because destroying it makes your unit move in to the tile the enemy had occupied, which is usually deeper in enemy territory than the tile your unit is currently occupying, perhaps in range of an enemy city's fire. |
| 318 | * DubNameChange: In this case, it's a Port Name Change. Due to space limitations, many of the names for the SNES port of Civ 1 were abbreviated or changed completely. |
| 319 | ** Technology Advancements |
| 320 | *** Advanced Flight to [=Flight2=] |
| 321 | *** Atomic Theory to Atomic |
| 322 | *** Bridge Building to Bridging |
| 323 | *** Bronze Working to Bronze Wrk |
| 324 | *** Ceremonial Burial to Burial |
| 325 | *** Code of Laws to Laws |
| 326 | *** Conscription to Conscript |
| 327 | *** Construction to Construct |
| 328 | *** The Corporation to Corporat'n |
| 329 | *** Electricity to Electric |
| 330 | *** Electronics to Television |
| 331 | *** Engineering to Engin'rng |
| 332 | *** Feudalism to Stirrup |
| 333 | *** Flight to [=Flight1=] |
| 334 | *** Fusion Power to Fusion |
| 335 | *** Genetic Engineering to Genetics |
| 336 | *** Horseback Riding to Riding |
| 337 | *** Industrialization to Industrial |
| 338 | *** Iron Working to Iron Work |
| 339 | *** Labor Union to Union |
| 340 | *** Magnetism to Compass |
| 341 | *** Mass Production to Mass Prod |
| 342 | *** Mathematics to Math |
| 343 | *** Nuclear Fission to Fission |
| 344 | *** Nuclear Power to Nuclear |
| 345 | *** Recycling to Solar |
| 346 | *** The Republic to Republic |
| 347 | *** Space Flight to [=Flight3=] |
| 348 | *** Steam Engine to Steam Eng |
| 349 | *** Superconductor to Supr Cndct |
| 350 | *** Theory of Gravity to Gravity |
| 351 | * {{Dystopia}}: It's possible to turn your Civ into one. Or ''the entire world'', as evidenced by one player who played the same world for the past ''[[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/12/civilization-ii ten years]]'', resulting in a world that chillingly resembles ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''. |
| 352 | * EarlyBirdCameo: Lots in ''V'': |
| 353 | ** [[HornyVikings Harald Bluetooth and the Denmark civilization]] are available in DownloadableContent, but before they were even announced, Vikings show up in the opening cinematic. |
| 354 | ** ''Gods & Kings'' added several Wonders, two of which, the Leaning and CN Towers, can be spotted on the cover of ''V'' long before ''Gods & Kings'' was announced. |
| 355 | ** Gustavus Adolphus shows up among the randomly-generated names for Great Generals. He eventually appears in ''Gods & Kings'' as the leader of Sweden. |
| 356 | ** Many of the city-states in earlier versions had their cities become part of full-sized civs in expansions. For example, there was a Vienna city-state before Austria was introduced. |
| 357 | ** In ''Civ VI'', A Winged Hussar which leading the charge during the Opening Cinematic before Poland was introduced in the game. |
| 358 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The original game had no worker unit, settlers did that job. Aircraft were units you moved around the map - make sure you get them back to a city next turn or they crash! Your civilization had no borders, just cities - that wasn't until ''III''. Zones of control - The game was built to be incredibly picky about where you could put a unit in relation to an enemy. |
| 359 | * EasterEgg / LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In ''IV'', you will occasionally get a random event about an In-Universe version of the ''Civilization'' game being developed. You can choose whether to sell it to your citizens as a popular video game, turn it into an educational program for your universities, or sell it away to foreign lands, [[YouBastard mocking it as undeserving to your country and earn a general profit out of it]]. |
| 360 | * EasyCommunication: All of your soldiers and cities can be instantly ordered to do anything, even in the ages before radio. |
| 361 | * EasyLogistics: Troops can "heal" (replenish their numbers) regardless of how far away they are from your civilization, and ''V'' 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. However, healing takes a lot longer outside of friendly territory. Land units only heal at half the rate, ships and embarked units can't heal at all outside of either the "Instant Heal" or "Supply" promotions. |
| 362 | * EasyModeMockery: The game compares you to a famous (or infamous) world leader after it ends. On easier difficulties before ''V'', you can beat the AI by a mile and still get compared to "UsefulNotes/WarrenGHarding", or worse, "UsefulNotes/DanQuayle." |
| 363 | * ElvisLives: The King usually stops by for a cameo in each game-- |
| 364 | ** Entertainers in ''I'' appear as Elvis; in the city view screens they'll look like Elvis wearing a bard outfit in early eras, and his iconic rhinestone jumpsuit by modern times. |
| 365 | ** Entertainers in ''II'' also appear as Elvis. Their appearance also changes with the eras, with Modern Era entertainers appearing as the King of Rock in the AdiposeRex phase of his career. |
| 366 | ** ''II'' also has Elvis on your High Council as the Attitude Advisor! While the personalities of everyone else changes with the era, no matter what costume he's wearing, he's ''always'' Elvis. |
| 367 | ** Elvis appears in ''III'' as {{Easter Egg}}s. If you set your PC's date to Elvis' birthday and start a regicide or capture the flag game, the "flag" unit will be Elvis. He's also in a hidden picture that appears if you wait long enough in the credits. |
| 368 | ** In ''IV'' he's the icon representing the Great Artist in the Modern Era (even when the artist's name is Creator/WilliamShakespeare or Creator/PabloPicasso!) |
| 369 | * 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. |
| 370 | * EpicRocking: Several civs have quite lengthy themes. Special mention goes to the Middle Eastern theme from ''III'', which clocks in at exactly 7 minutes, and two of Korea's ambient themes in ''VI'', which each last for nearly '''9''' minutes. |
| 371 | * {{Epigraph}}: In ''Civilization IV'', every technology has a quote with it from Literature/TheBible to Creator/OscarWilde to Sputnik 1. Narrated (mostly) by Creator/LeonardNimoy. |
| 372 | * EtherealChoir: ''Civ VI'' has ''Sogno di Volare'' ("The Dream of Flight"), a stirring paean to the achievements of humanity, sung in Italian. |
| 373 | * EveryoneMeetsEveryone: Normally the main action in the beginning of the game. |
| 374 | ** Played more straight via the World Congress in ''Brave New World'', which when first founded has you meet every civ you haven't met yet and vice versa. |
| 375 | * EveryoneIsBi: Leaders who flirt with the player at high relation do so regardless of the gender of the leader selected by the player. UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat has been particularly notorious for this throughout the series, but in ''V'' this was taken up to eleven: |
| 376 | -->'''Catherine:''' We were defeated, so this makes me your slave. [[HappinessInSlavery I suppose there are worse fates]]. |
| 377 | ** Averted with Harald Bluetooth, who will make passes at and take off his helmet for female rulers, but not men. |
| 378 | * EvilLaugh: The military adviser in ''II'' has a decent one. In ''Civilization V'', both Willem van Oranje of the Dutch and Maria I of Portugal break out into evil chuckles upon declaring war on you (Willem gets bonus points for being unable to contain himself [[BlatantLies halfway through claiming to hate having to do so]]). Pacal, on the other hand, gives a spectacularly creepy evil laugh when ''you'' declare war on ''him.'' Harald Bluetooth, meanwhile, [[BloodKnight laughs maniacally no matter who declares war on who.]] In ''Civilization VI,'' both Gilgamesh and Harald Hardrada do it if you declare war on them - Gilgamesh, especially, gets such a kick out of your foolish aggression that he gets a full bellowing three-stage laugh that brings a tear to his eyes. |
| 379 | * EvilIsEasy: Just don't engage in Diplomacy with other nations. EVER. It's certainly better than getting inconveniently betrayed or having to give them your technology and money. (See ChronicBackstabbingDisorder above.) |
| 380 | -->An Emissary from the _ wishes to speak with you. Will you receive him?\ |
| 381 | ''[You choose '''Reject.''']'' |
| 382 | * EvilIsHammy: Notorious warmongers such as Montezuma and Attila tend to have a lot more ham in their diet than the more peaceful leaders, especially in ''V''. |
| 383 | * EvolvingMusic: In ''VI'', each Civilization's theme music changes over the Era. For example the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es2PH6Qb7B0 Russian theme]] goes from traditional, to GrimDark (Industrial) to Soviet-theme chanting (Atomic Era), reflecting Russia's history itself. And yet the simple melody you start with is at the core of every evolution of the music. |
| 384 | * ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The aforementioned Giant Death Robot. Yes, that's the official name. |
| 385 | * EndGameResultsScreen: Your score is presented at the end of the game and is based on a complex metric based on the difficulty and how long it took you to finish. It's used for high score ranking. |
| 386 | * EyeOfHorusMeansEgypt: In Civilization ''IV'', ''V'', and ''VI'', the icons for the Egyptian Empire are the "Eye Of Horus". |
| 387 | * {{Facepalm}}: When conducting diplomacy in ''IV'', annoyed leaders tend to do this a lot, especially when a trade deal doesn't work out. |
| 388 | * FailureIsTheOnlyOption: |
| 389 | ** A lot of the diplomacy actions in ''IV'' lean in this direction, if you want to avoid choosing sides. You'll often 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 disliked by nearly everyone. (On the other hand, the price of joining up with one side is to be absolutely ''despised'' by the opposing side(s), losing most opportunities to do business with them and potentially joining your allies in declaring war on them.) |
| 390 | ** Also happens in ''V'' to a certain extent. Your 'friends' will request spare luxury resources and gold on a regular basis, without giving a blasted thing back. Although agreeing will improve relations a bit, they can get pretty greedy. But if you decline even once, they stop asking forever and it's a permanent diplomatic penalty. And if you make a request yourself, they will almost always decline and mark it as a penalty anyway, apparently because they are a bunch of jerkasses... |
| 391 | *** ''Gods & Kings'' thankfully toned this down. Requests have a fairly lasting impact on relation, and they don't get mad if you decline. They also aren't quite as greedy with gold requests anymore either. |
| 392 | *** Fixed further in the Fall 2013 patch of ''Brave New World''. Most civilizations will offer something in exchange for a luxury resource. |
| 393 | ---->'''Civilization's Leader:''' You have something that we want. Perhaps you'd like to trade for it? |
| 394 | * FamousForBeingFirst: |
| 395 | ** ''Civilization II'': The first civilization to research Philosophy starts a "golden age" that grants them a technological advances immediately. Those who research it later get no immediate benefit, it's just a prerequisite for other technologies like universities and medicine. |
| 396 | ** Similarly, ''III'' also offers a free technological advance for researching that tech. Since technologies in ''III'' can't be researched faster than in 4 turns, the value of instant tech-up is even greater. |
| 397 | ** ''Civilization IV'': |
| 398 | *** Being the first to research certain technologies makes the civ found a religion (such as Philosophy for Taoism), giving one a holy city that grants culture boosts. |
| 399 | *** The first civ to circumnavigate the world gets a permanent +1 movement bonus for all water units. |
| 400 | *** The first civ to research Liberalism gains a free technology. |
| 401 | ** ''Civilization VI'': |
| 402 | *** In the ''Rise and Fall'' expansion, civilizations earn points towards Golden Ages with "Historic Moments". Many of them only go to the first civilization to make the achievement: the first to discover a new continent, form a government, meet all the other civilizations, circumnavigate the globe, and so on. |
| 403 | * {{Fanservice}}: |
| 404 | ** ''V's'' leaders of either gender. Among the males there's Ramkamhaeng, Montezuma, and [[DownloadableContent Kamehameha]], all of whom are [[WalkingShirtlessScene basically shirtless]], plus there's Hiawatha in a loincloth and a pair of boots. Among the women there's Catherine the Great, whose PimpedOutDress has an ImpossiblyLowNeckline. |
| 405 | ** ''Gods & Kings'' continues this, especially with Theodora of the Byzantines and her ''divan''[[note]]the furniture piece that looks like a bed and couch[[/note]]. Justified in this example, as Theodora was originally a prostitute (and according to the historian Procopius, she was a particularly 'active' one at that). |
| 406 | ** The Egyptian herald from ''II'', a shapely, dark-skinned lady in a filmy, see-through dress (though BarbieDollAnatomy keeps it from being too risque). |
| 407 | ** UsefulNotes/CleopatraVII in the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoDS DS]] port of ''Revolution'' constantly makes flirty gestures (if the player's on good terms with her, at least). |
| 408 | *** Also in ''Revolution'' there's the incredibly busty Catherine the Great, and Elizabeth I has a cleavage window. For a male example, Alexander the Great is muscular with flowing golden locks and a cleft chin, and every bit as flirtatious as the girls are, flexing and blowing kisses a lot. Make of that what you will, considering Alex historically was probably not blonde and possibly homosexual depending on the scholar. It makes for some amusement if nothing else. |
| 409 | * FictionalEarth: The game always takes place on Earth and uses its cultures, and most of the games have an option to replicate a real world map, but it's also possible to use a randomly-generated map that looks nothing like the real Earth. |
| 410 | * FictionalHoliday: |
| 411 | ** [[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29661/Maryland_Declares_September_21_Civilization_V_Day.php Not so fictional.]] Maryland decided it wanted a ''Civilization V'' day. (Firaxis Games is based in Hunt Valley, MD, just north of UsefulNotes/{{Baltimore}}.) |
| 412 | ** "We Love the King Day" is where one of your cities is jubilant at you acquiring a particular luxury resource. They get a boost in food production (population growth rate) and it lasts a few turns. |
| 413 | * FighterMageThief: The four "Secret Societies" that ''VI'' players can join in the game mode of the same name work like this, with each society supporting a different playstyle: |
| 414 | ** The ''Sanguine Pact'' are the Fighters, with their bonuses exclusively centered around the immortal and indefinitely-scaling Vampire units. |
| 415 | ** The ''Hermetic Order'' are an alchemy and LeyLine focused Mage-like order that centers around science generation and identifying and improving LeyLine tiles by earning Great People. |
| 416 | ** The ''Owls of Minerva'' fit the Thief model, most notably gaining bonuses towards spycraft but also improving trading and city-state diplomacy. |
| 417 | ** The ''Voidsingers'' are a subversive take on Clerics, having bonuses that scale off a civ's faith generation, creating relics and being able to sap the loyalty from enemy cities. |
| 418 | * FinishingMove: In ''VI'', units now perform one when finally killing a unit. For example, polearm-wielding units like spearmen will [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice stab the final enemy, and swing it over their head]] as one. |
| 419 | * FisherKing: Though all games visibly show a civilization changing it discovers new technologies, some of the games go farther than that-- |
| 420 | ** Most notable in ''I'', where changing a government resulted in ''entirely'' different advisors--and if you were seeing this from another civilization, diplomacy screens as well. They appear to have originally been intended to correspond with specific civilizations; the devs for the SNES and Playstation ports seemed to take note of that. In most versions however, civs running Despotism in the early game have ancient Mongolian aesthetics. A civilization with an early game Monarchy will have ancient Egyptian ministers, but in the late game will look like early modern European royalty (with Shakespeare as your domestic advisor, and Leonardo daVinci as your science advisor). Early game Republics and Democracies have Greco-Roman aesthetics (with Plato as a science advisor) but in the late game will have American aesthetics (with Theodore Roosevelt as your defense minister, Mark Twain as your domestic advisor, Benjamin Franklin as your foreign minister, and Thomas Edison as your science advisor). Under Communism, all your advisors look like a little like Mikhail Gorbachev in different outfits. |
| 421 | ** In ''II'', your High Council changes appearance considerably depending on the technology level. Early in the tech tree they'll have Greco-Roman styling, then appear as medieval/early modern European in the mid game, and then suitably modern attire and personalities for the late game. |
| 422 | ** The High Council's personalities in ''II'' also change with the technology level. For example, early on the Science Advisor appears as a stereotypical Greco-Roman philosopher, as a court jester in the mid-game, and then as a high-pitched nerdy scientist with a LabcoatOfScienceAndMedicine in the late game. The one exception is the Attitude Advisor, who is ''always'' Elvis. |
| 423 | * FisherKingdom: In ''III'', the appearance and attire of a civ's leader changed with the ages. |
| 424 | * FloodedFutureWorld: In the ''Civilization VI'' expansion "Gathering Storm", polar ice caps begin to melt and some coastal land tiles become flooded when enough carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere from industrial buildings and units. |
| 425 | * FogOfWar: You can't see more than a few tiles away. In ''IV'', the Explorer and some of the promotions permit an extra square or two. If there's wild animals around, this is valuable. ''VI'' plays with the convention by having the fog resemble a map, with discovered features represented as sketches and unexplored areas as blank parchment [[HereThereBeDragons with random monsters]]. |
| 426 | * ForeignReScore: The SNES, Super Famicom, Playstation, and Saturn versions of ''I'' weren't developed by [=MicroProse=], but by the Japanese companies Creator/{{Koei}} for the SNES, and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmik_Ace Asmik Ace]] for all the others. These versions of the game have entirely different soundtracks not just from the original DOS version, but also from each other. They also, unlike the original version, have background music for different eras of the game (changing at 4000 BC, 1 AD, 1000 AD, and 2000 AD). |
| 427 | ** Also of note is that the Atari ST version of ''I'' changed some of the music as well. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugZx0VZX5LE&t=46 The title music and music for the opening cutscene]] have an entirely different feel, sounding more like the soundtrack of ''[[VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden E.V.O.]]'', at least the original PC-98 version. |
| 428 | * TheForeignSubtitle: Asmik Ace, the developer of most console versions of ''I'', titled their releases as ''Civilization: Seven Great Civilizations of the World'' (シヴィライゼーション 世界七大文明). |
| 429 | * FourX: One of the titans of the genre. |
| 430 | * FrontlineGeneral: It's actually [[DeconstructedTrope a bit of a problem in some games]]. For example, in the ''Civ IV'' expansions, Great Generals can be attached to units, giving them access to special promotions and letting them upgrade for free when you develop a new unit type. The downside is that the game picks your best defender when the enemy attacks you, and if that's your Great General because of all the upgrades and promotions, and your combat odds aren't 100%, it's entirely possible to lose them LeeroyJenkins style. The consensus is that Great Generals are best used for the [[CombatMedic Medic]] promotions (which don't influence combat order), or simply [[BoringButPractical left to settle in cities for an experience bonus to new units]]. |
| 431 | * TheFundamentalist: |
| 432 | ** There is an actual government type called Fundamentalism in ''II'', and a Theocracy civic in ''IV''. |
| 433 | ** ''V'' has several "Social Policies", of which one can have either Piety or Rationalism. You are forever barred from the other, likely for this reason. No longer the case in ''Brave New World'', however. |
| 434 | ** The AI in ''Gods & Kings'' tends to act like this when spreading religion. If they have their own religion and you try to spread your religion in one of their cities, they get angry, slap you with a diplomatic penalty and tell you to send your missionaries somewhere else. (You can choose to ignore their warning, which will lead to more serious diplomatic repercussions.) However, they're [[{{Hypocrite}} completely okay]] with sending ''their'' Great Prophets and Missionaries to convert your holy city to their religion (and if they ''do'' succeed in making their religion stick in your Holy City you get the "Indoctrinated" achievement[[note]]Despite this you can still produce Prophets of your religion[[/note]]). |
| 435 | *** If one of your cities is converted to another civilization's, you can ask them to stop sending missionaries to your cities, and depending on the AI's feelings toward you, they may comply. (For a while, at least.) If they don't they'll give a speech about "sending the true message to your people" who are cast into "ignorance" from ''your'' religion. |
| 436 | * FusionDance: This is basically how "formations" work in ''Civ VI,'' as a sort of compromise for players who miss the old stacks of doom or who have to deal with cramped battle situations with only one unit able to get at an enemy. Merging two units of the same type together (and later, adding a third) creates a "Corps" or "Army" unit, respectively (naval units become "fleets" and "armadas") that is stronger than a unit of that base level. Shaka Zulu was reworked for his reappearance in ''VI'' to specialize in this. An Army can even pull a RockBeatsLaser on a unit of a higher technological tier this way (again, fitting for the Zulus.) |
| 437 | * GameBreakingBug: The PC build of the original ''Civilization'' suffered from one of these at very high levels of advancement. Dubbed "popup pollution", once an indeterminate trigger condition was reached the player would be inundated by pollution squares appearing randomly in their territory. The pollution would appear even if the pollution levels of all cities were at zero. The effect would start as a minor annoyance and then grow, reaching upwards of 25 polluted squares ''per turn''. This could initially be fought with roving bands of Settlers acting as cleanup teams, but by the end the pollution was forming so quickly it could trigger GlobalWarming before the player's turn came up again. The only solution would be to launch one's spacecraft and end the game. |
| 438 | ** Popup Pollution could even form in the arctic and antarctic regions. These areas were typically not built up in game due to their lack of food production. Without comprehensive rail infrastructure, settlers could not be quickly dispatched to clean up the mess which could then bring about Global Warming even sooner. |
| 439 | ** The insidious part of Popup Pollution was that it would tend to only affect those players trying to go for a [[ScoringPoints High Score achievement]] by increasing their population and tech levels as they ran out the clock towards the end of the game. Polluted squares came with a point penalty and global warming could degrade land which would limit population growth so the bug attacked the one thing the [[LaserGuidedKarma player was still focused on]]. |
| 440 | * GameMod: Tons, including such main-stays like ''VideoGame/FallFromHeaven'' and ''VideoGame/Caveman2Cosmos'' for ''IV''. |
| 441 | ** Steam versions of ''Civilization V'' have access to the Steam Workshop which allows for all sorts of fictional and non-fictional empires to suddenly become playable. These include the enemy barbarians already ingame, Penguins, and Pirates. |
| 442 | * GameplayAndStoryIntegration: |
| 443 | ** In ''III''. Maps may be randomly generated, but the Persians can look forward to starting near the Zulu and Romans every time, the Chinese and Japanese can do the same, and the French seem to always start near a supply of furs. (The first two are because each civilization is linked to a specific region of the world that affects the architecture of their cities, in addition to starting all civilizations in the same region near each other.) |
| 444 | ** Happens by default in ''V'' with Civs with terrain bonuses starting near the corresponding terrain, since it wouldn't make much sense for the forest-focused Iroquois to be dropped in the middle of a desert, but there is an option to force a truly random start. |
| 445 | * GangUpOnTheHuman: |
| 446 | ** ''IV'' had an "always war" option in specific game setup. It was hard fighting all the other civs off on higher difficulties, but it was the only way to play against AIs without being nagged and hassled by diplomacy screens. This was dropped in ''V''. |
| 447 | ** Note that "Always War," like the One-City Challenge, is quasi-AscendedFanon: both were relatively common {{Self Imposed Challenge}}s within the Civ community in the earlier incarnations of the game. It's still possible to play "Always War," but the game doesn't "officially" recognize it. |
| 448 | * GenderBender: |
| 449 | ** In ''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. |
| 450 | ** Happens again in ''IV'', as pre-industrial era spies, men in black robes, transform into women in [[SpyCatsuit skin-tight catsuits]] upon reaching the industrial era. In ''IV'', it's actually a case of SweetPollyOliver, since upon being captured, the "male" spies still sound female. |
| 451 | ** In ''IV'', your first view of the Russian leader is a dashing young cavalier in a tricorne and cavalry uniform. Then he turns around, and -- ''she'''s the cross-dressing and attractive Catherine the Great, showing a naughty smirk. An instance of ShownTheirWork, because the image is based on an actual contemporary portrait of cross-dressed Catherine. |
| 452 | * GenderFlip: All great people in ''IV'' are represented by male units, though a significant number of them are actually women. Among other things, this gives UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc quite an impressive beard. |
| 453 | * GeoEffects: |
| 454 | ** 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. |
| 455 | ** ''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. An exception is that a unit on a hill can shoot over a forest or hill, but not over a forest on a hill. Units with the "indirect fire" promotion (which is free for modern ranged units) skip all of these effects and can shoot any target in range, as long as the player can see it. (Units in ''III'' and ''IV'' also received bonuses to line-of-sight from on top of a hill, but this didn't affect combat.) |
| 456 | ** Movement penalties for difficult terrain (forests, hills etc) are more pronounced in ''VI''. In previous games, moving into a tile with such will cost 2 movement points if you have 2 or more, but you can still move a unit with 1 movement point into them. In ''VI'', if you don't have at least 2 movement points, the unit can't even move into difficult terrain at all. This also buffs units that ignore difficult terrain or have movement bonuses in such. |
| 457 | * GlassCannon: |
| 458 | ** 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. |
| 459 | ** This is averted in ''II'', where artillery is the strongest offensive unit and decent defensively. ''II'' doesn't have any unit capture, however. |
| 460 | ** In ''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, although in ''IV'' archers were actually the best units at defending cities before the advent of gunpowder). A necessary change as they're still as fragile as ever and units can't share spaces. Also in ''V'', ranged units take less damage from other ranged units. |
| 461 | * GlobalCurrency: Undifferentiated gold (which is still used before you research "currency" and gain the ability to trade it with other players). This "gold" in an abstract representation of each civ's buying power. Strangely enough, in ''IV'' you can use the UsefulNotes/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. |
| 462 | * GlobalWarming: Better watch that pollution, or your cities will sink! More recent games backed off on this, instead occasionally altering a terrain square to an inferior type, such as grasslands to deserts, but ''VI'''s ''Gathering Storm'' expansion brought it back big-time. |
| 463 | * AGodAmI: |
| 464 | ** By definition, any Pharaoh leader, like Ramesses II. |
| 465 | ** Defied by Nebuchadnezzar in ''V'', who is depressed about everyone calling him a God. |
| 466 | ** In ''VI'', one of the policies that can be adopted is declaring oneself a "God King". As one might expect from history, this is very useful in the early game but not so much later on. |
| 467 | * GodzillaThreshold: Using nukes turns the affected tiles into unproductive Fallout, which will hamper you strategically in the long run. But if there's a big enemy army incoming that you can't beat conventionally, it may be worth going for the NuclearOption so you can live another day. |
| 468 | * GondorCallsForAid: |
| 469 | ** You may or may not be able to get your supposed allies to fight your enemies with you, but in ''V,'' allied City-States will also declare war on your enemy with you. They won't send their armies too far, but they'll cut off all trade with your enemy, and one Autocracy ideological tenet will have militaristic City-States [[EagleSquadron donate units]] to you much more often. In ''VI'', the suzerain of a city-state can pay gold to levy a city-states military, taking control of it for a period of time. |
| 470 | ** In the other direction, when a city state is under attack, it may quest you to secretly gift them units which will give you a good bit of influence with them. There's a bit of Fridge Logic in that you can "secretly" gift units that only your civ can make. |
| 471 | * GoodPaysBetter: The Republic and Democracy forms of government place some restrictions on your foreign policy (harder to initiate or sustain a war effort) and support for military units, and your populace gets discontented quicker when you are engaged in war (even those not initiated by you)--not exactly easy for a player bent on conquest (at least early and mid game), compared to Despotism, Monarchy, or Communism. But the economic benefits of these government forms (especially Democracy) is astronomical, to the point that late in the game the player can still pay for a large military (with advanced technology paid for with more money that can go into research or tech trades) if they're so inclined, and become a formidable superpower. Or they're more likely to achieve the technological victory (first ship to Alpha Centauri). |
| 472 | ** In first and second game Democracy was a GameBreaker, since it gave you immunity to corruption - your empire could run smoothly without ''any'' loss of money from its sheer size. Not only that, but keeping the majority of your citizens happy and entertained allowed your cities to gain one population point per turn each as long as you had enough food to sustain growth and luxuries to stave off discontent. |
| 473 | * GracefulLoser: |
| 474 | ** In ''V'', sometimes when you defeat a civilization, their leader will congratulate you on your victory. |
| 475 | ** In ''III'', if you win by Conquest, Domination, or Time, the other leaders will insult you and demand a rematch, but if you win by culture, they all love you and sing your praises for besting them. |
| 476 | * GreenAesop: The early games focus on how pollution and rampant exploitation of resources is bad and eventually counter-productive, as resources and manpower spend on dealing with the fallout of heavy pollution will outweight any sort of gains. |
| 477 | * GuideDangIt: A recurring issue throughout the series is having some important mechanic that isn't covered in the manual nor in-game prompts: |
| 478 | ** ''II'' had caravans and freights for delivering payoff in gold when it reaches a city with demand for the good it carries. The game doesn't explain how the wealth calculations operate and far more importantly, doesn't even mention caravans provide beakers to the currently researched technology, allowing to sky-rocked in research. |
| 479 | ** ''III'' diplomacy system is so poorly explained, it ascended into being believed to be simply bugged or completely broken. Most notably, the game has a clear, well-defined difference between entering diplomacy menu, contacting a civilization and declaring war to it vs. simply entering territory of that civ or attacking its units and declaring war when the game asks you if you want to do so - without telling player so. As far as the game is concerned, the first is a polite, somewhat justifiable diplomatic action, while the other is an unprecedented act of aggression and a show to everyone in the world that your civilization is an unhinged conqueror that can't be trusted or reasoned with. |
| 480 | *** Also in ''III'', it is mentioned nowhere that a city build next to a river can ignore construction of an aqueduct. Knowing this allows to ignore construction of a redundant building and its steep upkeep. |
| 481 | ** ''IV'' reworked the specialist system from previous games, limiting their number and changing their utility, along with classes and relationship with the civics you are currently running. It isn't explained at all, while treating the system like it is Civ ''[=I-III=]'' is outright counter-productive. |
| 482 | ** ''V'' changed the economic model, decoupling science from your income and making them two separate resources, gathered differently. Neither tutorial nor manual cover for it, making it a guessing game how to even get science, ''especially'' if you come from the background in previous games in the series. |
| 483 | * GunboatDiplomacy: Permeates through all the games. ''V: Brave New World'' has it by name as a tier-3 Autocracy Tenet that makes city states become more friendly with you for each turn that they're afraid of your military might, while in ''VI'' it's the name of a Policy that gives you open borders from all city-states and increases the rate at which you earn Envoys. |
| 484 | [[/folder]] |
| 485 | |
| 486 | [[folder:Tropes H-N]] |
| 487 | * HardCodedHostility: |
| 488 | ** Barbarians in every game. No civilization can have diplomatic relations with them, and they are hostile to every civilization. |
| 489 | ** Downplayed in ''V: Brave New World'', regarding civs that follow a different ideology than you. You ''can'' overcome the resulting diplomatic penalty and retain friendly relations, but the much more likely outcome is that they soon begin hating your guts, even if you've been close allies up to that point. |
| 490 | * HaveAGayOldTime: In ''II'', when you changed governments, the newspaper would announce, "[Your Citizens] Are Revolting!" To which all the AI players' citizens would go, "Well, duh." |
| 491 | * HegemonicEmpire: Since the third game, there is usually some form or another of a culture mechanic that allows civilizations to potentially annex cities without conflict and ultimately win the game by creating a highly influential culture that utterly overwhelms all others. |
| 492 | ** The sixth installment's Rise and Fall DLC (as well as Gathering Storm) has the loyalty mechanic which embodies this trope in a way. If a city receives enough pressure from neighboring rival cities (either from population, governors, or other factors) it will immediately break away from their home empire, initially as a free city, and after additional pressure, becomes part of the civ that gained this city's favor the most. |
| 493 | *** Eleanor of Aquitaine's ability amps this up; if she manages to be the most responsible for making a city break away, she immediately gets to keep it for herself. |
| 494 | * HellIsThatNoise: The Global Warming sound in ''Civilization IV''. |
| 495 | * HerdHittingAttack: |
| 496 | ** Artillery in ''IV'', and others with the Collateral Damage promotion. |
| 497 | ** All units in the original ''Civilization'' and ''II''. |
| 498 | ** Nukes are great for ruining people's day, as you might expect. Depending on the game they do a varying amount of direct damage to an area and then some insidious damage over time which might ruin the environment itself until cleaned up. |
| 499 | * HereThereBeDragons: In ''VI'', unexplored areas of the map feature sporadically-placed dragons, serpents and compass roses. |
| 500 | * HeroUnit: |
| 501 | ** ''VideoGame/Caveman2Cosmos'' has for each civilization a group of historical, semi-historical and outright mythical characters that can be recruited as special units of two varieties: civilians and military. They can be either used for some direct action ''or'' to support your civilisation as a whole with some special bonus. Everyone within the same, real-world continent has access to all hero units from that continent, too, as long as they've integrated specific culture into own civ. |
| 502 | ** The November 2020 update for ''VI'' adds the "Heroes and Legends" game mode, which allows for the recruitment of famous mythical heroes as a unique form of Great People, such as [[Myth/ArthurianMyth King Arthur]], [[Myth/PacificMythology Maui]], and [[Literature/JourneyToTheWest Sun Wukong]]. |
| 503 | * HeyYou: Part of a BilingualBonus with Maria I: she consistently addresses you with the formal ([[AntiquatedLinguistics and outdated]]) second person Portuguese plural... except if you call on her while at war, after which she will shout "Porque vieste?" ("Why did you come?") with the informal second person singular, which is considered rude to use for the unfamiliar and which you would ''never'' use for a foreign head of state. |
| 504 | * HintSystem: Each game will automatically give periodic hints about game features. In the city and technology screens, advisors recommend which option to pick. These hints may be turned off, with later games also letting the player to just give hints on new features. |
| 505 | * HistoricalBeautyUpdate: ''Revolution's'' national leaders, especially the females. |
| 506 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: ''duh''. UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, UsefulNotes/MaoZedong, UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, UsefulNotes/ElizabethI, UsefulNotes/FrederickTheGreat, UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat, UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi, UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan, UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar, UsefulNotes/JosefStalin, UsefulNotes/ShakaZulu... And that's just the first game. |
| 507 | * HollywoodHistory: There has not been a single game where Roman Legionaries have been properly depicted. |
| 508 | * HopelessWar: Often, when you get close to winning, the tiny, incredibly outdated and outnumbered AI will attack you just as a last gesture of defiance. In ''V'', they may even acknowledge the futility of the gesture, but just say that they hope to buy a little more time. |
| 509 | ** [[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/ One Civ II player]] has a game that has been going on for TEN REAL LIFE YEARS. It is the year 4096 AD, and the Americans, the Vikings and the Celts are the only nations left[[note]]There are a couple of others like the Sioux, but they all control only one city that is subservient to one of the big three[[/note]]. Nuclear warfare has reduced most of the Earth's surface to [[PollutedWasteland radioactive swampland]], the polar icecaps have melted away twenty times, 90% of the world's peak population from 2000 AD has been killed in the war or starved, and cities cannot build any improvements because 100% of labour is [[WeHaveReserves needed to replace units at the frontline]]. This is Literature/NineteenEightyFour after two thousand years. |
| 510 | * HumanPopsicle: The crew of the spaceship that flies to [[VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri Alpha Centauri]] in the Technology victory. |
| 511 | * HumanResources: In ''IV'', the Slavery civic allows the player to sacrifice population to rush production. |
| 512 | * HumansAreWhite: With the exception of special units, all units in ''III'' and ''IV'' are white. However, the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''IV'' added different skin sets for different civilizations (Mali has black swordsmen etc). |
| 513 | * HumongousMecha: |
| 514 | ** ''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. |
| 515 | ** The "Next War" scenario included in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''IV'' also features one. |
| 516 | ** The ''Gathering Storm'' expansion for ''VI'' also adds the Giant Death Robot (according to its Civilopedia entry, its official name is the Gun Deployment Rig, but no one calls it that), which requires 1 unit of uranium to build and ''3'' to maintain. Given a [[Film/PacificRim possible inspiration for its appearance]], all it needs is a {{Kaiju}} to fight. It can gain new abilities and upgrades with Future Era techs, such as Drone Air Defense (increases anti-air defenses), [[WaveMotionGun Particle Beam Siege Cannon]] (to quickly tear down a city's defenses), Enhanced Mobility (faster movement and the ability to cross mountains InASingleBound), and Reinforced Armor Plating (better defense against land and naval units). WordOfGod is several Future Era units were scrapped in favor of focusing developers' efforts on the GDR. |
| 517 | * IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: Just click the link, there's a big list on the trope page. |
| 518 | * IdleAnimation: All of the leaders have them on their diplomacy screens after ''IV'', though always on a short loop. It's especially noticeable in ''V'', where leaders will roll their eyes, gesture for you to act and generally look confused or irritated if you're doing nothing and wasting their time. |
| 519 | * ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: In ''VI'', the CoupDeGrace animation of a spear-wielding unit will be to stab the opponent, and ''swing them over their heads'' and impale them on the ground. |
| 520 | * ImpliedDeathThreat: Whenever the AI demands technology or gold. Especially in I and II. |
| 521 | * InstantAwesomeJustAddMecha: ''V's'' Giant Death Robot. Also the Assault Mech (Juggernaut in some translations) in the "Next War" scenario included in the ''Beyond The Sword'' expansion for ''IV''. |
| 522 | * 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 their spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri, they win. |
| 523 | ** Or, more egregiously, by cultural victory. In ''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. |
| 524 | *** ''Civilization V'' even mentions that if you want a Domination Victory, you'd better hop to it, since even if you've crushed every city around and brought their Capital to their last few health-points, they still win if they managed to launch their spaceship or completed the Utopia Project, even if half their city is burning to the ground. |
| 525 | * InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: In the player's favor, for once. In earlier games, if you were alone in a land that was separated from the rest of a world by a narrow one-tile isthmus (which was common, due to the random fractal maps) you could put ''one single unit'' on it and thus keep the computer from settling "your" area unless it wanted to declare war. ''IV'' and ''V'' avert this by allowing friendly units to pass friendly units, and allowing units to embark to shallow water early in the game with the right tech. However, with tricky city planning a player can still accomplish this with borders - even the tiniest area covered by borders is still unpassable without war if you deny opponents Open Borders. |
| 526 | * InterfaceSpoiler: |
| 527 | ** Occasionally in ''V'', your advisors will recommend you build a Work Boat even though you have no coastal resources left to improve. It's a sign that there's a hidden Oil reserve somewhere inside your coastal borders. |
| 528 | ** In ''VI'' with the ''Gathering Storm'' DLC, the map overview for Settlers shows which plots of land will be flooded when climate change inevitably makes the seas rise. An anti-frustration feature, this is available from the Ancient era, even though ancient peoples should have no way of anticipating that climate change will be a problem for their distant descendants. |
| 529 | * {{Irony}}: |
| 530 | ** The United Nations in ''II'' actually makes it easier to wage war on nations that aren't willing to fight. |
| 531 | ** In ''V'', a diplomatic victory can be attained by buying off city states with gold, and getting enough science to build the UN (prior to ''Brave New World'') also helps. Conquest of other civ's cities is a good way to get more of both of these. Fully conquering full-grown civs is a further help as it decreases the votes needed to win. |
| 532 | *** Averted in ''Gods & Kings'', where you are no longer allowed to vote for yourself in a UN election. If you have done a lot of conquest, you might [[NiceJobBreakingItHero accidentally hand your opponent victory]]. |
| 533 | *** ''Brave New World'' goes back to letting you self-vote, but the system is more complex in general. |
| 534 | *** Although ''IV'' didn't have city-states and the diplomatic victory involved manipulating the AI into casting their votes for you, it was possible (at least on easier difficulty levels) to conquer enough cities to control 60% of the population but not the 60% of land area needed for a Domination victory, and have enough votes to win a "Diplomatic" victory all by yourself, even if all the other civs hated your guts. |
| 535 | ** When you're playing as Japan in ''I'' (SNES version) and ''II'' and you complete the 'Manhattan Project' wonder in Hiroshima: |
| 536 | --->The world's first Nuclear Test has taken place in Hiroshima! |
| 537 | ** A quote from ''V'' when you get one of the better military techs of the game (rifling) - "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it". |
| 538 | *** In addition to that, the Minutemen of ''Civilization V'' and the Redcoats of ''Civilization IV'' are depicted as musketmen and riflemen respectively, when the inverse was true in real life. |
| 539 | ** Researching the Scientific Method obsoletes monasteries and the Great Library, among other things. If your scientific research heavily depended on monasteries or the Great Library, the scientific method will actually set back your research a bit. |
| 540 | * ItemAmplifier: Some of the Wonders that can be built will amplify the effects of any city improvements you've also built (such as the Art/SistineChapel, which doubles the effects of any cathedrals you've built), or amplify unit abilities (Magellan's Expedition increasing ship mobility). |
| 541 | * ItemDropMechanic: Barbarians in the franchise often have some kind of reward mechanic associated with their defeat-- |
| 542 | ** In ''I'' and ''II'', Barbarian Leaders give a sum of gold upon defeat, representing the ransom paid by the leader's kinsmen for his release. In ''I'' the reward is always 100 Gold, but in ''II'' the amount depends on the level of Barbarian activity chosen at the game's start--from 50 for "Roving Bands" to 150 for "Raging Hordes." Also, the Barbarian Leader needs to be attacked while he is alone. If he's killed as part of a stack of units, you'll get no ransom. |
| 543 | ** In ''Revolution'' and ''Revolution 2'', conquered Barbarian encampments provide rewards similar to the "Goody Huts" of earlier games. For example, the survivors may join your civilization as Settlers, you might find new technology, or you may get a new military unit. |
| 544 | --->'''Brennos the Mighty:''' You have captured the village of my son-in-law. He has been working on a strange seagoing craft. |
| 545 | * ItWillNeverCatchOn: |
| 546 | ** Napoleon providing a Real Life example is the quote for steam power in ''IV''. |
| 547 | ** Added on to in ''V'' before ''Brave New World'': Napoleon gets free culture per turn until Steam Power is discovered. |
| 548 | * IWarnedYou: In ''II'', attempting to consult with your advisors during a state of anarchy results in getting nothing but a chaotic mess as they all try to talk over each other at the same time -- but one voice that stands out loud among the noise is your military advisor telling you that he knew this was coming and you should've paid more attention to his advice. |
| 549 | * {{Jerkass}}: Any civilization that is Hostile towards the player in ''V''. They will spare no moment at going on with long-winded insults at the player and just being an outright jerk. |
| 550 | ** Montezuma of ''V'' is an infamous example. When it comes to dealing with you, "Peace, Friendship, and Coexistence" does NOT exist in his vocabulary. |
| 551 | ** Gandhi is a nuke-happy prick in most games but he's even worse in ''Civ VI''. In that game, leaders have a Leader Agenda which relates to their history (such as "likes long time allies" for Sumeria or "hates small civs" for Rome), and a randomized hidden agenda such as wanting a lot of salt or needing more oil. Gandhi is a "Peacekeeper" (doesn't go into wars that label him a warmonger), but is also very likely to be "Nuke Happy" (likes himself and others building/using nukes). This leads to him being a passive-aggressive shithead who will hate you for not having nukes well before you can have them, [[ExactWords attack you in wars that won't label him a "warmonger"]] (especially in the Ancient Era where there is little chance of him being a warmonger), congratulate you for using nukes one turn and the very next denounce you for warmongering, and attack you after starting things so he won't look bad in front of everyone else. |
| 552 | * 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. |
| 553 | ** In general, the Civ games entice a "just one more turn before I go to bed" mentality that has caused several missed hours of sleep. |
| 554 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: In contrast to the incredibly stubborn AI of past games (''IV'' in particular), the AI in ''V'' won't hesitate to surrender if things are going [[CurbStompBattle particularly badly]] for them. It's even smart enough to change its mind about whether or not to declare war on you. If you spy an army approaching your border and get warned by a spy that Genghis Khan is planning an invasion, marching your own army up to the border can actually make the AI reconsider and pull back. |
| 555 | * LandOfOneCity: |
| 556 | ** One big change that ''V'' introduced was City-States, countries with just one city who won't expand beyond the limits of that city. They're usually named after capitals or other well-known cities of nations not yet present (like Geneva and Zurich from Switzerland). You ''could'' straight-up conquer them if they've got territory you want, but it's often to your benefit to do favors for them and stay on their good side, since they'll give you extra faith, happiness, food, culture or military units, as well as access to their luxury and strategic resources, and will declare war against anyone you are at war with. Either way, they add a complicating factor that wasn't seen before. There's also a fun subversion to this; if they are at war with a proper civ and you donate enough units, they can conquer a city of that civ, and if the city is a former capital or has a wonder, they won't have the option to raze and will keep it instead. |
| 557 | ** There's also an achievement for beating the game with just one city. Typically, the only victory you can get this way is a cultural victory, but if you play your cards right, that one city will be all you need. |
| 558 | ** Most Italian cities and provinces were independent rivals that often warred with each other; it wasn't until relatively recently in history that Italy was one united nation. So a large number of city-states in ''Civilization V'' are Italian. |
| 559 | ** Venice is required to do this in ''Brave New World'' as part of its gimmick (one city, double trade routes). Also, you can turn this on by selecting One-City Challenge in ''V''. |
| 560 | * LargeHam: The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTIk80uBPg Military Advisor]] in ''II'' is the largest. The warmongering civ leaders in ''V'' also count. |
| 561 | * {{Leitmotif}}: Starting in ''I'' and continued in ''IV'', ''V'', and ''VI'', each civilization (or leader, in ''IV'') has a particular theme song. Some of them come from existing compositions, some inspired by surviving fragments or melodies from ancient civilizations, and some are original compositions. In ''IV'' and ''VI'' the leitmotifs change with the ages, reflecting the technological development of the respective civs. ''V'' has "peace" and "war" versions of each civ's theme instead. |
| 562 | * LetsYouAndHimFight: |
| 563 | ** In ''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 quickly sign a peace treaty with the enemy, leaving you to keep fighting alone, weakening you both and making you look like a JerkAss. Of course, if you don't agree to join in the war with your 'ally', it's a diplomatic penalty. And they'll hardly ever help you if you ask them for aid, except when you are so strong that you could probably win the war by yourself anyway. It's even possible for your former ally to turn sour on you, and think of you as a "warmongering menace to the world!" when the only war you ever declared was ''the one they asked you to''. |
| 564 | ** You can do this to the AIs yourself if you have good relations with one of the AIs. Warmonger AIs might even do it for free (especially Alexander), but most of the others will join in if you have a technology or two to trade and they don't feel completely outmatched. |
| 565 | * LemonyNarrator: Comparable to the overall changing {{Tone Shift}}s of the series, there are perceptible shifts of this nature in the Civilopedia. From ''I'' to ''IV'', many recurring Civilopedia entries remained the same--or were expanded upon without completely rewriting--[[SpockSpeak and had an academic tone]]. ''V'''s Civilopedia started doing away with this, sometimes outright adding snark. This more lemony, "relatable" style of writing became more pronounced in ''VI.'' |
| 566 | ** A good example of this change is in the Submarine's Civilopedia entry. [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Submarine_(Civ1)#Civilopedia_entry Short and academic]] in ''I'', [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Submarine_(Civ2)#Civilopedia_entry expanded]] in ''II'', [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Submarine_(Civ3)#Civilopedia_entry unchanged]] in III and [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Submarine_(Civ4)#Civilopedia_entry barely edited]] in ''IV'', but [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Submarine_(Civ5)#Civilopedia_entry rewritten]] in ''V'' with a subtly lemony tone--then [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Submarine_(Civ6)#Civilopedia_entry rewritten again]] with more pronounced lemon flavor in ''VI''. |
| 567 | * LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Combat-based factions like the Huns and Songhai get major bonuses in the early game, though their special abilities become less useful as the game progresses. Production, science, and culture-based factions typically start off much weaker, but their bonuses and unique units often stay useful longer. The Iroquois, for example, are crippled in the early game (as clearing forest tiles will ruin their late-game production and destroy their "roads"), but once they unlock the Lumber Mill and the Longhouse, their production skyrockets to a level that few civilizations can equal. |
| 568 | * LittleBlackDress: Worn by the Spy in ''II''. |
| 569 | * LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading: |
| 570 | ** The original game took a looong time to build worlds. The "In the beginning..." sequence was included to help disguise this. |
| 571 | ** A fairly common complaint in ''V'' between turns, especially in the later eras on larger maps with all but the most powerful home [=PCs=] (at least at the time of release). One trick is switching to the strategic view, which has simpler graphics, before ending each turn. A patch in June 2012 (making way for the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion) has some people saying this has gotten worse, although a small number have said the patch has actually shortened the wait. Solvable by enabling "Quick Combat", which makes all units damage each other instantly when attacking instead of having to play the attack animations, which is extremely useful where air units are concerned in particular, as the AI loves to spam them, and without this setting turns could take minutes [[GameBreakingBug or possibly even an hour, because that Triplane for some reason needs to make literally one thousand passes over an enemy Destroyer...]] |
| 572 | * LookOnMyWorksYeMightyAndDespair |
| 573 | ** As you have seen on the top of the page, the box art of ''I'' depicts a giant sarcophagus-like carving under a modern city. |
| 574 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkjjpoo2s68 The defeat screen]] of ''V'' depicts a colossal life-like marble statue of a woman with only the head and outstretched left arm exposed in an excavation site in the middle of a desert akin to the TropeNamer. Wonder which civilization sculpted the statue in the first place? Yep, it's your civ and the victorious civ sends archeologists to unearth it. |
| 575 | ** The quote itself is also spoken in IV's Construction tech discovery quote. |
| 576 | * LostTechnology: |
| 577 | ** In ''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... but that means it's still possible to build a Knight (strength 20) in the late Medieval Era, send it into a ruin, and get an early-Industrial Cavalry (strength ''34''), which eats any contemporary unit for breakfast. The chances are of course small, but if the odds are in your favour, you could potentially get a GameBreaker. Another big jump is available to the Huns, the same civ that have the opposite effect filed under PowerupLetdown, where Horse Archers can upgrade to Knights early in the game. |
| 578 | ** 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. |
| 579 | ** One mod takes finding technology in the ruins to its logical conclusion: If the explorers find lost technology their civilization doesn't have the tech level to handle, unit loss can ensue. If the player is ''lucky''. |
| 580 | * LowTechSpears: From the third game onward, spearmen are among the first combat units that civs can obtain in the Ancient Era, requiring only one or two advances on the TechTree to unlock. They can persist through the Classical Era but are completely deprecated by the Medieval Era. |
| 581 | * LuckBasedMission: Small Wonders from ''III'' fall into this category easily |
| 582 | ** Iron Works increase production of the city they are build in by 100%, which is equal to a factory with a (non-nuclear) power plant, require no technologies at all and are relatively cheap for such a massive bonus. The catch being - you need to have a city with ''both'' iron ''and'' coal within its radius to build them. You can't even see where coal is located until researching Steam Engine, which is the final phase of mid-game. Chances of getting this wonder are thus purely to lucky city placement. And nothing hurts more than realising you placed a city one tile away from a spot that would allow to build Iron Works. |
| 583 | ** Military Academy allows to form Armies without having a Leader. If that wasn't enough, all Armies gain a +25% bonus to their Attack and Defense, making an already broken feature even more broken. However, to ''build'' Military Academy, you need to gain a Leader, form an army with it ''and'' win at least a single fight with it. Since getting Leaders is by itself a LuckBasedMission for continously winning battles with an already elite unit, chances are you will never unlock this wonder and if so - only very late in the game, when it is significantly less potent than in earlier stages. |
| 584 | ** Pentagon takes it a step further. It increases capacity of armies from 3 to 4 units in them, ''but'' you need to have ''three armies active in the same time'' to unlock it. Getting ''one'' army is a huge achievement during a match. Getting three... well, short from building Military Academy and dedicating time and resources of your entire civ to crank everything out, as if building a space ship to Alpha Centauri, there is no other way to do this. |
| 585 | ** Heroic Epic, a small wonder increasing chance of emergence of more Leaders in the future, has the same requirement as the Military Academy - have an army (and thus a Leader) and win a fight with it. |
| 586 | * MagicallyBindingContract: In the earlier games of the series, the players were free to break treaties as they wished. Later on, some treaties were given a minimum duration - for example, after signing a peace treaty in ''IV'', it is actually impossible to declare war against the same player for 10 turns. |
| 587 | * MagikarpPower: |
| 588 | ** America is the patron saint of this trope in this game. All of their special units and bonuses only appear in the Industrial Era, but those B-52 bombers and Navy [=SEALs=] hit ''hard''. In ''VI'' they also get the Film Studio unique building which can help them snag a late-game Cultural Victory. |
| 589 | ** In '''III''', the Agricultural trait provides +1 Food from tiles adjacent to rivers... but under Despotism, the starting government, no regular tile can yield more than two of anything, which renders the bonus almost useless until you've researched and switched to another government type. Once you have -- and assuming you remembered to settle near rivers -- expect your food production to skyrocket and your cities to swell in size. |
| 590 | ** England is a naval power geared towards gaining an intercontinental empire, but crossing ocean tiles isn't possible until the Renaissance, so for the first half of the game England won't be doing anything special - except quietly bulking up on its army tech, of course. As soon as the Renaissance hits, England will be locking down maritime trade and invading all over the place with deadly Ships of the Line and Redcoats. |
| 591 | ** Venice tends to have a rough early game [[LandOfOneCity because it can only control one city]], meaning one wrong move can be fatal, especially if you're placed next to a warlike Civ. However, later on you'll be swimming in boatloads of cash and can simply buy whatever military units you need and bribe every other city-state to your cause, provided of course you don't instead simply use Merchants of Venice to make them your puppets. |
| 592 | ** Brazil in ''V'' doesn't fare well in the early game because its start bias is for jungle terrain, meaning you'll have a lot of hardly usable real-estate and you'll probably also start next to [[TheDreaded the Aztecs]]. But in the Renaissance, Brazilwood Camps can be very diversely useful and your University bonuses can make you quite the scientific powerhouse. |
| 593 | ** The Zulus in ''V'' are both this ''and'' a CrutchCharacter. They have nothing really going for them in the early-game nor the late-game, but in the Medieval period they get their [[LightningBruiser Impis]] and their special promotions, allowing them to go on a path of bloody conquest until gunpowder is invented, the Impi become obsolete, and the Zulus are BroughtDownToNormal. |
| 594 | ** Scout units in ''Civ VI'' are individual Magikarps. They start out weaker than the base combat unit of the game, but they have a unique promotion tree that starts with them becoming able to move through rough terrain and terminates with them getting a whopping 20-point combat bonus (that's an entire technological age!) and being able to retreat after attacking. The medieval, industrial and modern versions of the unit trade their melee attack for a ranged one which lets them pick off enemies from a distance without endangering themselves. There's a reason why the modern version of them are Spec Ops soldiers. The trick is keeping them alive long enough to get promoted that high. |
| 595 | * MediumAwareness: |
| 596 | ** On rare occasions, when declaring war, UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat 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. |
| 597 | ** Some of the reasons why another civ isn't on good terms with you dip into this. From ''V'': "They think we are trying to win the game in a manner similar to theirs, and they don't like it." |
| 598 | ** 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." |
| 599 | * MegaCorp: You can found them in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''IV''. |
| 600 | * AMillionIsAStatistic: Inherently, based on the nature of the game. In ''V'', the TropeNamer quote might be read aloud when you reach the Modern Era. |
| 601 | * MillionMookMarch: |
| 602 | ** 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 research 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. |
| 603 | ** ''V'' offers a few Policies that make a small army worthwhile, and the combat system generally favors small armies of high-tech units. However, you can have as many planes in the same city as you want (prior to the October 2013 patch), which invokes this trope if you happen to have enough oil or aluminum to support a large air force. This makes the Arabs -- who get [[ArabOilSheikh double oil production]] -- ''excellent'' for players who enjoy DeathFromAbove. |
| 604 | * TheMissionary: Present in games which model religion, allowing you to be more proactive about their spread if you wish. |
| 605 | * MissionFromGod: In the SNES port of ''I'', each new game doesn't start with the intro showing the formation of Earth and development of life--that's instead the port's AttractMode. Instead, a goddess appears before the young leader of your chosen civilization. She explicitly gives your leader a mission to "build great cities, and cause civilization to flourish throughout the Earth." She teaches you irrigation, road-building, and mining, then bids that you "discover the rest for yourself." |
| 606 | * ModernStasis: You can play this game as 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 the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''IV''. ''V'' makes the aversion official with energy weapons on the Giant Death Robot and XCOM Squad. |
| 607 | * ModularDifficulty: In addition to the overall difficulty level, the advanced game setup allows the player to adjust factors like the threat of [[HardCodedHostility hostile barbarians]]; the abundance of resources; whether your starting location is biased towards favourable conditions; and whether new Policies and Promotions can be saved up or must be used immediately. |
| 608 | * MookCommander: Starting in ''IV'', there's Great Generals, and in ''V'' onwards, Admirals as well. In ''IV'', the Great General can be attached to a unit to give him better upgrades and status buffs. In ''V'' and ''VI'', the Great General/Admiral gives status buffs to units within a couple of tiles, and in ''VI'' their bonuses are limited to units of specific eras. In all games' cases, the Great General doesn't fight directly, and in ''IV'' and ''V'', they'll be killed in action if directly attacked. In ''VI'', they instead teleport away to safety. |
| 609 | * MoraleMechanic: |
| 610 | ** The "Happiness" mechanic works like this. The happier your populace, the more productive your empire is and (from ''V'' onwards) the more frequent your Golden Ages will be; an unhappy city will shut down and potentially even revolt against you. |
| 611 | ** There are also "Morale" promotions for units, which simply improve unit strength. In ''IV'', it's just a normal promotion choice; in ''V'', it's given to units trained in the city where you built your Heroic Epic. |
| 612 | ** Also inverted in ''V''; military units lose combat strength based on how unhappy your empire is. |
| 613 | ** ''III'', ''IV'', and ''VI'' have a "war weariness" mechanic, which is based heavily on losses taken during war, amongst other factors. The higher your war weariness, the less productive your cities are. Certain government types can reduce war weariness and lessen the effect. |
| 614 | * MoralEventHorizon: Invoked with City-States in ''V'', which will declare ''permanent'' war on any civ that has conquered too many nearby city-states. |
| 615 | * MultipleEndings: Multiple win conditions, actually. |
| 616 | ** 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. |
| 617 | ** Domination was taken out, and ''Revolution'' added Economic: Have 200,000 gold and build the World Bank wonder. This was not included in ''V''. |
| 618 | ** The diplomatic victory has changed quite a bit. |
| 619 | *** 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 victories. |
| 620 | *** ''Gods & Kings'' added a lot more to City States, who can now have several requests active at a time and can be further influenced by Espionage (and Religion, with the right perk). Furthermore, civs can no longer vote for themselves. The AI will vote for whichever Civ they like best, so you can actually improve your chances by being nice to them. |
| 621 | *** ''Brave New World'' again changed things around for diplomatic victory. Civs can once again vote for themselves with all of their delegates. You get delegates from city state allies, and by getting the Globalization tech and then assigning diplomats instead of spies (and some bonus delegates to be gained in other ways). If you get enough delegates, you can win with them on the next world leader vote. |
| 622 | * MultipleLifeBars: In ''VI'', cities with walls gain two health bars, one for the city and one for the fortification. By contrast, earlier games have fortification buildings simply add to the health of the city. Certain units can bypass the walls to attack the city directly, and the replenishment of each has different qualifications: life regenerates automatically at a rate determined by population, whereas walls can only be repaired as a construction project which depends on the city's production rate and prevents the city building anything else, like new units. |
| 623 | * MultiSlotCharacter: Leaders in ''VI'' who lead multiple civilizations like Eleanor of Aquitaine or Kublai Khan, and leaders who have different personas available like Theodore Roosevelt or Catherine de Medici are treated as separate leaders for selection purposes. |
| 624 | * {{Munchkin}}: |
| 625 | ** Some AIs, especially in ''V'', play to win. For example, if they have nukes and you're about to win by peaceful means, they are likely to declare war and drop those nukes. But at least they don't exploit any bugs. |
| 626 | ** And they usually play to their strengths. Alexander for example will put his City-state relations bonus to good use by befriending as many as possible, even if he isn't going for a diplomatic victory. |
| 627 | * MutuallyExclusivePowerups: |
| 628 | ** In ''V'', any given city can have a Nuclear Plant or a Solar Plant, but not both. They have the exact same effect (increasing city production), but the Nuclear Plant requires Uranium and the Solar Plant doesn't, providing an unusually subtle GreenAesop: ecology helps you save resources that are limited[[note]]And devote more of them to bombing other people. Well, we said ''green'' aesop, not ''pacifist'' aesop[[/note]]. However, the Solar Plant ''does'' require your city to be built on or next to a desert tile. |
| 629 | ** In ''VI'', each Military Encampment can have either a barracks (increased XP for infantry) or a stable (increased XP for cavalry) but not both. Similarly, there are two types of museum - Archeological or Art Museum - and each Theatre Square can only have one. |
| 630 | * MyRulesAreNotYourRules: When playing on the higher difficulty levels in ''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. |
| 631 | ** 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". The extra happiness the AI receives was toned down a bit in the ''Brave New World'' expansion. |
| 632 | ** 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. |
| 633 | ** Higher difficulties also give the AI a pretty blatant starting boost, most notably giving it scouts to start with, and on the highest difficulty, ''another settler''. |
| 634 | ** In ''IV'', you could set separate levels of difficulties for the AIs in Custom Game. They don't pay much attention at all to having a higher difficulty. |
| 635 | * NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: |
| 636 | ** The Giant Death Robot in ''V'' and ''VI''. |
| 637 | ** The Dreadnought and Juggernaut in the ''Next War'' scenario included with the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''IV''. |
| 638 | ** [[CurbstompBattle Landship]], in the case someone is lucky enough to discover Ancient Ruins with a Cavalry unit during the Renaissance era in ''V''. |
| 639 | * {{Narrator}}: In more recent games, they've had most of their descriptive text be read aloud, following in the footsteps of ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri''. Though in this case, they only have one person doing the job: |
| 640 | ** Creator/LeonardNimoy in ''IV''. Though Nimoy wasn't hired for the expansion packs, making the new narration (by Sid Meier) rather jarring. |
| 641 | ** W. Morgan Sheppard in ''V''. Unlike Nimoy, he ''did'' come back for the expansions, and even did the voice-work for the marketing featurettes in ''Brave New World''. |
| 642 | ** Sean Bean in ''VI''. |
| 643 | * NaturalDisasterCascade: PlayedWith. ''Civilization IV'' has world climate meters, with your actions in the game having the potential to affect the chances of storms, volcanism, river floods and/or droughts occurring due to GlobalWarming. |
| 644 | ** ''Gathering Storm'' for ''VI'' plays with this, as you can customise "Disaster Intensity", which affects the general frequency of volcanic eruptions, forest fires, river floods etc. Disasters in general get worse due to climate change, with rivers constantly flooding and the coastlines eventually being submerged entirely as the sea level rises. The ''Apocalypse'' gamemode takes this up to eleven; once the climate intensity reaches its final stage, asteroids begin to pelt the planet, destroying everything they rain down upon (''including capital cities!''). |
| 645 | * NavalBlockade: You can do this in some of the games. It prevents the blockaded city from working water tiles or gaining income from trade routes. |
| 646 | * NecessaryDrawback: |
| 647 | ** In ''V'', Culture and Science are at loggerheads for how they progress. You get more science per turn based directly on your population, while cultural progression (and therefore, the cultural victory) becomes harder the more spread-out your empire is. One compromise is to conquer rival cities and puppet them rather than annexing them, since you will get the science bonus from their population but not the hit to cultural progression. |
| 648 | ** The civics and similar mechanics in previous games generally had an advantage and a drawback. The social policies in ''V'' avert it, as they were designed not to have drawbacks, besides the opportunity cost of not choosing the other available policies. |
| 649 | ** In the ''Brave New World'' expansion for ''V'', trading with other countries gets you some nice profits, but if you're more advanced than them, it'll also leak science points to them as their traders pick up a few tricks from traveling to your country. Also, trade caravans can be attacked. |
| 650 | ** Building Settlers to found new cities and expand your civ's potential for long-term growth has always involved slowing or stopping your cities' natural population growth in some fashion or another. |
| 651 | ** Nearly every unit type has some advantage and disadvantage over the basic slow melee unit. Fast melee (mounted and armour) have more movement points and usually can move after attacking, but have penalties against cities. Anti-mounted (spearman tree) are weaker than basic melee against anything that isn't their prey. Ranged units are {{Glass Cannon}}s that, although able to attack without hurting themselves, will suffer against melee; the Gatling Gun and later units are equally strong in defence as in offence but can only attack adjacent targets. Siege units are strong against cities but, with few exceptions, need to use one movement point on setting up and have reduced sight range necessitating other units to spot for them. Aircraft can attack from afar without exposing their basing city or carrier but there are lots of ways for a prepared defender to punish their use. |
| 652 | * {{Nerf}}: Some indirect ones, due to expansions changing some of the mechanics: |
| 653 | ** The Aztecs in ''V'' did not get a rework in ''Brave New World''. Before that, their unique ability, "Sacrificial Captives", giving them Culture for kills meant that they could be used to pursue a Cultural Victory, counterintuitive though it might seem. Under the Tourism system introduced by BNW, that is no longer possible. |
| 654 | ** Also from ''V'' we have India. Their unique ability, "Population Growth", is the only one in the vanilla game that carries a penalty: namely, it doubles unhappiness from number of cities, with the fact that it halves unhappiness from total population (a very powerful buff) making up for it. It was crafted with the intention of building a very "tall" nation with a small handful of very densely-populated and built-up cities, which was optimal for a Cultural Victory in the vanilla game (more cities increases the culture cost of social policies). ''BNW'', however, changed Cultural Victories such that now, a large empire is preferable, precisely the sort of thing that India's unique ability pulls against. |
| 655 | * NeutralityBacklash: |
| 656 | ** What happens in ''IV'' if you try to stay neutral in a war between two other countries. Your points with both countries will go down. |
| 657 | ** Generally in effect for ''V'' especially when a very rare request is made by the [=AI=] for you to denounce another civ. If you don't do it, they will rant at you in perfect spirit with the trope and possibly even declare war. |
| 658 | * NeutralNoLonger: |
| 659 | ** In ''II'', a Spy planting a nuclear device causes all civilizations to go at war against the perpetrator. |
| 660 | ** In ''V'', city-states become permanent enemies to a civilization which keeps attacking and conquering city-states. |
| 661 | * NewTechIsNotCheap: ''IV'' uses this as part of their approach to the series' traditional tech tree. While you don't have to research all of the prerequisites for certain technologies, doing so reduces the research costs. |
| 662 | * 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. |
| 663 | * 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. |
| 664 | ** The ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''IV'' introduced the "Greed" and "Corporate Expansion" quests, which codify this. |
| 665 | ** In ''I'' and ''II'', Democracy will completely eliminate Corruption in all of your cities but your people will get very pissy (2 Unhappy People) for every military unit that you move outside its home city. Democracy will also prevent you from breaking or refusing peace treaties with other factions, meaning that you can only fight when they break the peace or by never engaging in diplomacy. |
| 666 | ** Spain in ''V'' seems to have this as an inevitability due to how their unique trait works: they get double the yield from Natural Wonders (including El Dorado) and you'll often see a tasty Natural Wonder within the limits of a City-State. Time to sharpen your swords, load your cannons and muskets, and go ''hunting'' if you see one. |
| 667 | * NoAnimalsWereHarmed: In ''Civilization VI'' any cavalry unit who gets killed will have their horse survive and flee the battlefield, compared to older versions where both horse and rider died. The same applies to scouts and their dogs. |
| 668 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In ''Revolution'', the Modern Era diplomacy advisor is clearly modeled on Condoleeza Rice. |
| 669 | * NoFairCheating: Earlier games included a cheat function, allowing you to do all kinds of things, like alter amounts of gold and production, spawn and heal units, and edit enemy cities, stalling their production, reducing their population, or even straight-up deleting them, but if you enabled this your score was recorded with a big red "CHEATER" tag. In ''V'' and ''Beyond Earth'' the cheat menu is absent, but a GameMod called In Game Editor replicates most of the traditional cheat functions. Unfortunately, playing with ''any'' mod, even purely cosmetic ones, [[DisproportionateRetribution disables all achievements.]] |
| 670 | * NoRangeLikePointBlankRange: In ''V'', late-game you gain access to machine gun/bazooka teams. They count as ranged weapons, but can only fire one tile away unless they have the extra range promotion, which is the same as melee units. Since it's technically a ranged attack, however, they don't take any damage in return, unlike melee units, who always take some regardless. |
| 671 | * NoSell: One of the reasons why Stealth Bombers are a GameBreaker in ''V'' is their immunity to AntiAir. That thick network of Mobile [=SAMs=] of yours won't do a thing; your best hope is to quickly bring down the cities they're based in, because hoping that they take more damage attacking your units than they can Air Repair back is a futile one. |
| 672 | * NoSwastikas: |
| 673 | ** The Third Reich is conspicuous in its near-total absence, although there is one quote from UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler for ''IV's'' Fascism tech (though he's simply listed as "a German dictator" in the German version), and UsefulNotes/ErwinRommel is featured as a Great General in ''Warlords''. In any case, it is highly unlikely for Hitler to be playable in any future installments due to Germany's [[BannedInChina tough censorship laws]] restricting the depiction of Nazi material, not to mention the PR disaster it would bring. 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. |
| 674 | ** There's also the UsefulNotes/WorldWarII scenario in ''II''; it has scripted AI, so the Axis and Allies will repeat events that happened in real life in the first few turns, like the Axis occupying Holland. On the other hand, the only built-in scenario for ''III'' dealing with World War II (in the ''Conquests'' expansion) was the Pacific Theatre. |
| 675 | ** The "World War II: Road to War" mod included with the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion for ''IV'' 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. |
| 676 | ** ''Brave New World'' for ''V'' introduces ideologies modeled after the three major ones that emerged during the aforementioned UsefulNotes/WorldWarII period (liberalism, communism, and fascism, just so we're on the same page). Except it's not called as such, it's [[InsistentTerminology freedom, order, and autocracy]]. One of the new Wonders introduced is Prora, a giant vacation resort... built by the Nazis. It even requires a Civilization to follow Autocracy in order to build it. |
| 677 | * NonCombatEXP: Scout units can gain Experience Points by claiming villages and discovering Natural Wonders to make up for the fact that it's difficult for them to survive direct combat with other units and gain Experience Points that way. |
| 678 | * 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 (looking at you, Isabella), and all of whom have personalized and sometimes entertaining interactions. For instance, if presented with a deal she doesn't like, Catherine the Great may slap "the player", complete with StarTrekShake, while if your relations are good, 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. |
| 679 | * NonIndicativeName: The Diplomatic Victory in ''VI'' is an economic victory in disguise since nearly everything needed for a diplomatic victory can be, and is most easily, bought with gold. Actual diplomacy is not only optional but can be [[ViolationOfCommonSense actively detrimental]]. |
| 680 | * NonStandardGameOver: |
| 681 | ** The Earth will cease to exist if you use about 200 or more Nukes. |
| 682 | ** In the Next War scenario in the "Beyond the Sword" expansion for ''IV'', the world will "crack open" after 20 nukes total (including rivals). |
| 683 | * NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The intro movie for ''V'' has a Arabic Chieftain explaining a dream of world domination to his son. For some reason, [[https://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. |
| 684 | * NotTheIntendedUse: |
| 685 | ** ''III'' introduced [[ObviousRulePatch the infamous research limit]], where it doesn't matter how well you are doing, each technology takes 4 turns to research, and the excess research doesn't carry over. However, ''because'' it doesn't carry over, it is possible to micro-manage the 4th turn of each technology in such a way to still get the tech, while the surplus income, rather than being put into research of new technology (which is impossible), goes directly into your coffers. Suddenly earning extra 400-800 gold every 4th turn becomes a breeze. |
| 686 | ** Did you know that Great People in ''VI'' are useful scouts/explorers? They have high movement points, can embark, and even enter ocean tiles without research! Even if an enemy goes over them, they are taken to the nearest city instead of being captured. So if you have plenty of unused Great People (like, say, idling Admirals, or Great Musicians that can't be activated because your Great Works gallery is full), make them run towards unexplored territory! |
| 687 | ** The ''Gathering Storm'' expansion for ''VI'' brings in climate change mechanics, which can be manipulated by a continental in-land civ to screw over any civilization built primarily on the coast. |
| 688 | * NukeEm: |
| 689 | ** Across all the games, nuclear weapons are by far the most devastating weapon that can be built (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 (A.K.A. NiceJobBreakingItHero). Interestingly, in ''IV'' you can get the [[UsefulNotes/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]]. |
| 690 | ** The "Next War" scenario in the ''Beyond The Sword'' expansion for ''IV'' features biological missiles. They can wipe out almost entire stacks of units, even when they're sufficiently fortified. Ironically, however, they can't affect cities, neither do they warrant a worldwide declaration of war on you when used, thanks to how the game's system works. |
| 691 | [[/folder]] |
| 692 | |
| 693 | [[folder:Tropes O-S]] |
| 694 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: |
| 695 | ** Purchase the Democracy perk in ''Revolution'' and your production and culture increase greatly, but at the cost of your Congress vetoing you whenever you try to breaking peace treaties or refuse peace offers from rival civs. The other civs understand this limitation, and will liberally abuse it by attacking and capturing one of your cities, quickly offering you peace so you can't do anything about it, and repeating the process from there. And Congress never lets you refuse the peace offer or launch a counter-attack to reclaim your city, [[ArtificialStupidity no matter how obvious it is that you're being played.]] The Senate under Republic and Democracy in ''I'' and ''II'' also vetoed any attempt to declare war or refuse peace, but the AI was less advanced then. |
| 696 | ** Averted by the AIs themselves in ''Revolution''. Not only do they not have to agree to peace on the turn you attacked them if in Democracy themselves (they are usually given it as a grace period and will often demand something in compensation if you really want to force peace again), but they will remain at war until you/they initiate diplomacy again. In certain cases, AIs in Democracy can refuse peace (at least without a bribe) indefinitely while remaining in Democracy, making this a case of [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules them playing by different rules]] as well! |
| 697 | * ObviousRulePatch: |
| 698 | ** In ''II'', an early wonder, Pyramids, provided a free granary in every city for the rest of the game. In ''III'', it still provides a free granary in every city - but only on the same continent, while being twice as expensive to build. |
| 699 | ** ''III'' introduced a limit on how fast research can be done, after ''II'' infamously allowed you to set up your economy and caravans in such a way to get a few technologies in a single turn. No matter how well you're doing, each tech takes 4 turns at minimum to finish. On top of that, hard-coded eras with obligatory techs needed to advance to the next TechTree were added[[note]]Oftentimes, those technologies did nothing by themselves and offered no benefits from researching them[[/note]], to further slow down a human player and give the AI a sporting chance. Both of those elements were scrapped in ''IV'', under overwhelming complains from player over FakeDifficulty, ''especially'' since [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules AI was just getting technologies out of thin air]], with pace of research dictated by the difficulty setting. |
| 700 | ** ''III'' has a Small Wonder, Wall Street, which generated 5% interest from the current treasury. Yeah. This was hastily {{nerf}}ed - the interest got capped at mere 50 gold, while the requirements for Wall Street itself got increased from 5 banks to 5 stock exchanges (which require banks first). It's ''still'' well worth the effort, but no longer a game breaker it was upon introduction. |
| 701 | * OneHitPointWonder: |
| 702 | ** Civilian units are this in every game, barring special circumstances. |
| 703 | ** All military units were this until ''II'', which introduced a HitPoints system to avert the "[[RockBeatsLaser Spearman Beats Tank]]" problem. ''III'' simplified the combat system but reintroduced the problem. ''IV'' merged HitPoints and combat power into one figure, making DeathOfAThousandCuts a serious problem. ''V'' generally averts this, but there are a few situations where units become {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s despite having 10 HP: |
| 704 | ** Any embarked unit is instantly killed by enemy naval units moving onto their tile, unless they have Defensive Embarkment. (No longer the case as of ''Gods and Kings'') |
| 705 | ** Units stationed in cities are instantly killed if the city is captured or nuked. |
| 706 | ** Civilian units attacked in melee on land are either captured or killed instantly, depending on type. |
| 707 | * OneHitPolykill: An attacking unit can destroy all units in an enemy stack. Starting with ''Civilization III'' and ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', it started to be replaced by a collateral damage mechanic to make massed assaults easier. The result was the "Stack of Doom" strategy, so ''V'' did away with stacks entirely. |
| 708 | * OneStatToRuleThemAll: |
| 709 | ** Food and population growth is the highest value stat in most Civilization games, particularly from ''IV'' onward, as it removed infrastructure requirement to grow above certain size of a city (which was particularly harsh in ''III''). By having more population, you have more people working, more wealth being generated, and population growing. Various buildings in ''IV'' offer either percentage modifiers, so the more the city was making of a given thing, the bigger the bonus. Not to mention, in ''V'', several buildings (such as the Library) scale proportionally based on population ''and'' kept percentage-based modifiers. It's not uncommon for people to build 2-3 cities on one playthrough and win because of this (since having lots of small cities carries a higher unhappiness penalty than having a few massive ones). Its relationship with Science makes the problem worse in ''V''. A larger population means higher Science output, and each city you found marginally increases your technology costs, so by only having a few cities with high population, you're going to have a technological advantage over larger civs. This is apparently one of the main reasons why putting heavy emphasis on science is important, since ArtificialStupidity causes the AI to suffer technological penalties for having more cities and instead are blessed with [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard a cheating economy]] so that they can put emphasis on [[ZergRush building a lot of weak units]] while neglecting to properly build their own cities. It's usually better to have few strong units than to try and build as many units as possible. |
| 710 | ** Production in ''VI'' where the population bottleneck for most of the game is Housing rather than Food, making the latter considerably less valuable than it used to be. In particular well-placed Industrial Districts can become massive powerhouses of production without ever taking up more than one tile, rapidly accelerating everything else the city wants to focus on from science to culture with the only real exception being Faith-purchased units. |
| 711 | ** While various victory types can ignore certain stats unless you're going for their victory type (as in, faith has little value if you're not focusing on religion) no victory type can ignore science output. Science victories require you to race ahead through the tech tree as fast as possible, military units for domination are locked behind increasingly advanced technologies and wonders are also locked behind technology. And even if you're going for culture or faith victories, you need to be able to repel potential invaders and spearmen just won't cut it. This isn't as prevalent in ''VI'' due to the introduction of the culture based civics tree, but the game still doesn't really require you to focus on those for all victory types, meaning culture buildings are a secondary concern. You still do need decent cultural output for new governments and so on, but it's very easy to ignore many civics. |
| 712 | * OpeningNarration: In the first game, this was used to cover the LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading. In ''IV'', it was brought back as a tribute... And recited by Creator/LeonardNimoy! ''V'' has W. Morgan Sheppard doing the opening narrations (there's one for every civ) as well as the quotes for when you research something. In 'VI', Creator/SeanBean narrates, as well as voicing one of the characters in the opening cinematic. [[ChronicallyKilledActor Appropriately]], his character apparently dies in the Battle of Britain. |
| 713 | * OrderVersusChaos: |
| 714 | ** Late-game, ''V'' has three mutually exclusive ideologies (expanded upon in ''Brave New World''): Freedom (representing liberalism), Order (representing communism) and the OmnicidalNeutral between the two, Autocracy (representing fascism). Freedom empowers individuals, so it's got lots of abilities regarding specialists, Great People, and Wonders, while Order empowers the state, making it good for squeezing efficiency out of a huge industrial empire. Autocracy is about empowering the uncontested leader and pushing their civilization above all others, particularly through war, so it's got tons of military-related abilities. |
| 715 | ** ''VI'' has Communism, Democracy, and Fascism as the penultimate government forms. The increasingly severe relationship penalties for differing government types mean that any genuine peace between any combination of communists, democrats, and fascists is ''basically'' impossible unless you've been very close friends with someone from the start. The best you can hope for is a cold war. |
| 716 | * OverflowError: Averted. There was an UrbanLegendOfZelda postulated that Gandhi's reputation for loving to NukeEm was caused by an underflow in his aggression score as leader of an AI India civ, a meme known as Nuclear Gandhi. Creator/SidMeier's autobiography says it never happened: no civ's aggression could ever go below 1 and the story was probably made up by an InternetTroll annoyed that AI Gandhi had nuked him. [[Website/TVTropes Guess where it apparently started?]] |
| 717 | * OvertRendezvous: In the intro to the ''Beyond The Sword'' expansion for ''IV'', 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. |
| 718 | * PaintingTheMedium: Some versions of ''I'', when engaging in diplomacy with other civilizations, have specific fonts for the leader's dialogue. |
| 719 | ** For example, in the DOS version [[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/0/09/Frederick_PC_(Civ1).png Frederick,]] [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/6/6c/Elizabeth_I_PC_(Civ1).png Elizabeth]], [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/6/67/Napoleon_PC_(Civ1).png Napoleon,]] [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/6/61/Abe_Lincoln_PC_(Civ1).png Lincoln,]] and [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/9/9a/Stalin_PC_(Civ1).png Stalin]] all use the same serif font. [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/2/2f/M.Gandhi_PC_(Civ1).png Ghandi,]] [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/1/10/Hammurabi_PC_(Civ1).png Hammurabi,]] [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/f/fb/Montezuma_PC_(Civ1).png Montezuma,]] and [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/2/20/Genghis_Khan_PC_(Civ1).png Genghis Khan]] use a curlier font. [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/d/d2/Alexander_PC_(Civ1).png Alexander,]] [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/f/ff/Caesar_PC_(Civ1).png Caesar,]] [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/9/9e/Shaka_Zulu_(Civ1).png Shaka,]] and [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/civilization/images/b/b1/Mao_Tse_Tung_PC_(Civ1).png Mao]] use a font that's [[ForeignLookingFont evocative of ancient Greek]]. |
| 720 | ** The Windows and Macintosh versions of ''I'' lean even harder on the use of {{Foreign Looking Font}}s. [[http://www.geocities.ws/jvaldeztoo/cph/CSArchives/CivMac/CivMac_ss_002.jpg Frederick]] simply uses a Blackletter font, but [[https://media.moddb.com/images/downloads/1/175/174361/Screenshot15.png Stalin's font]] goes ham with the TheBackwardsR. Alexander and Mao similarly had fonts strongly meant to invoke their civilization's writing system. (Many other leaders, however, simply opted for a more plain but unique font. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj2ZGjU_g20 You can see the whole gamut in this video.]]) |
| 721 | * APartyAlsoKnownAsAnOrgy: Cities celebrating "We Love The King Day" can get a growth bonus, depending on the game. From ''I'' through ''III'', it was only available to Democracies and Republics; other governments got production bonuses instead. In ''V'', it's available for everyone. |
| 722 | * 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. |
| 723 | * PermanentElectedOfficial: You -- and every other civ leader -- are apparently immortal and can reign for ''thousands'' of years without any chance of being elected out or overthrown. |
| 724 | * PimpedOutDress: The queens usually wear fancy gowns based on their clothes in real life. |
| 725 | * PlayerElimination: Player elimination is a victory condition. In the first game, the AI player gets a second chance if killed too early, being switched with the variant choice. The human player doesn't get this benefit, at least not until an option found in ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri''. |
| 726 | * PleaseSelectNewCityName: The TropeNamer. |
| 727 | * PoliticallyCorrectHistory: |
| 728 | ** As mentioned elsewhere on the page, the Civilopedia and leader descriptions desperately try to portray all civilizations in an entirely positive light. They glorify expansion without necessarily mentioning what that entailed (say, for the Spanish or Mongols), and gloss over some inequality. For instance, Korea's Joseon Dynasty is praised as intellectually and culturally enlightened, while not mentioning how conditions were [[NoWomansLand for females]]. |
| 729 | ** ''Civ V'' attempts to give a more rounded view on each civilisation, and also a 'judged by history' section comparing how their ethics match up to today's. |
| 730 | * PopularHistory: |
| 731 | ** For the most part, only wonders and civs that are well ingrained in the public consciousness end up in the games (before mods and expansions, at least). Within a civ, their unique units/buildings/improvements are more often what the civ is famous for in real life, with less emphasis on what really helped the civ develop and compete. |
| 732 | ** Averted in ''VI'', where even the base game contained several wonders (World and Natural) that most people would be unlikely to have ever heard of - along with a Civ (Scythia) and several Leaders (Tomyris of Scythia, Mvemba a Nzinga of Kongo, Hojo Tokimune of Japan, etc) unfamiliar to those that haven't studied history extensively. Even several old-hat Civs have received leaders who are far less well-known (but perhaps more suitable) than the old, familiar faces. Gone is Alexander the Great (to be later added in a pack as the leader of the Macedon civilization), with Greece instead being led by either Pericles of Athens or Gorgo of Sparta. And rather than Augustus or Julius Caesar, Rome is spearheaded by Emperor Trajan. Add to that wonders such as Great Zimbabwe, Huey Teocalli, Mahabodhi and the Potala Palace, and you've got a great opportunity to actually learn a bunch of ''new'' stuff about history from playing the game... or, more likely, getting curious enough to read the Civilopedia entries. |
| 733 | * ThePowerOfRock: |
| 734 | ** Rock 'N Roll is a constructable Wonder of the World in ''IV''. It even plays Music/VelvetUnderground's "Rock and Roll" during the movie (and Creator/LeonardNimoy reads a line from the song when you research the Radio technology that makes the Wonder possible). Thanks to the TechTree, it usually gets finished around the same time a Diplomatic Victory becomes possible (the UN requires the Mass Media technology of which Radio is a direct prerequisite). 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. |
| 735 | ** In ''Brave New World'' for ''V'', Great Musicians in the Modern Era look like a rock band, and their power is to go into rival territory and overwhelm their culture with a huge boost to your influence. The ability to win with rock is even more direct than in ''IV'': pressing the button to perform a concert can end the game then and there. Besides victory, rock can also be the tipping point that causes revolutions in other civs, which can lead to entire cities defecting to your side. |
| 736 | ** The ''Gathering Storm'' expansion for ''VI'' adds the Rock Band as a late-game cultural unit. Purchased using Faith, rock bands are sent overseas to tour, generating tourism for their home country and helping them win a cultural victory. Upon creating a rock band, you name it and give it one of several promotions that inform what type of music it plays, giving it various bonuses; for instance, GlamRock, {{reggae}}, and festival bands gain bonuses for playing at theater squares, water parks, and national parks respectively, [[ChristianRock religious bands]] can convert foreign cities, and [[IndiePop indie rock]] bands [[RebelliousSpirit reduce loyalty in foreign cities]] (great for when you want to flip a neighboring city with shaky loyalty). |
| 737 | * PowerupLetdown: |
| 738 | ** Scouts are early units excellent for exploring, mainly since they ignore most terrain movement penalties. This is nice as they can find "goody huts" or ancient ruins before other civilizations can... except when they get the "Your unit arms itself with weapons found in the ruins" event, which effectively changes the unit from a scout to an early combat unit, good in combat, but losing the movement bonus which was essentially the only reason to have the scout in the first place.\ |
| 739 | \ |
| 740 | To the joy of everyone, ''V'' fixes this problem by having these huts upgrade scouts to archers that still have all existing scout abilities (ignore terrain cost, see farther, plus any scouting promotions it has earned). Fans have coined this unit the "[[{{Portmanteau}} scarcher]]", and it keeps these scouting abilities after it is upgraded through the ages, so even as a machine gunner it enjoys the scouting bonuses, while normal scouts cannot upgrade at all and thus become thoroughly obsolete for combat. |
| 741 | ** Sometimes in ''V'', if you're using a Warrior for some quick exploration and they stop on some Ancient Ruins, they can turn into spearmen. Great for everyone else! Not so great if you're playing as The Huns, which replaces spearmen with battering rams as their unique unit, leaving you with a siege unit that can't attack other units or properly protect itself. You best get that ram back to your city so you can put it to better use, lest the barbarians come and smash it to bits. |
| 742 | ** Some of the Unique Units lose their massive bonuses when they get upgraded. The poor Zulu Impi are probably the worst, losing nearly all their unique bonuses over the next two upgrades above them. |
| 743 | * PretextForWar: In ''VI'', you will take smaller diplomatic penalties if there is an existing reason for you to go to war. The penalties are significantly reduced or essentially nullified if you're doing so to recover cities that belonged to you or one of your allies, or to defend a city-state you're the suzerain of. |
| 744 | * PrimitiveClubs: The first military unit in the TechTree is the warrior, which from ''Civilization IV'' onwards is depicted with a simple club. |
| 745 | * {{Privateer}}: |
| 746 | ** This is a powerful ship type introduced the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''V''. They can gain gold from attacking coastal cities from the start (other melee type ships need a promotion first), and have a good chance of converting a defeated enemy ship into one of your own. A pretty versatile vehicle for the golden age of piracy. |
| 747 | ** ''III'' had a less powerful version of the Privateer that functioned pretty much like any other warship, but you could use it to attack another civilization's ships even when not at war, and it appears "colorless" on the map so other civs don't know it's you that's attacking them. On the other hand, any civ can also attack those Privateers without repercussions. |
| 748 | ** ''IV'' also had the Privateer, masked to allow the player to beat the tar out of enemy ships while remaining on good terms with them. |
| 749 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Some leaders act this way in their dialogue, although their behaviour towards you may not be that honorable. |
| 750 | * PublicDomainArtifact: The helmet worn by Harald Hardrada in ''VI'' is modeled after a real one found in Sutton Hoo in England. |
| 751 | * PuppetState: |
| 752 | ** In the ''Warlords'' expansion for ''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. |
| 753 | ** In ''V'', 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 one 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. |
| 754 | * PyramidPower: Throughout the series, The Pyramids have always been one of the available Wonders of the World, and they always grant a fairly impressive bonus to whoever builds them. |
| 755 | * PyrrhicVictory: |
| 756 | ** War in general can easily lead to this, especially if you're the aggressor. It increases your civ's unhappiness, forces you to divert resources from buildings, wonders, and science to military units, and causes your reputation to suffer among the rest of the leaders. Even if you succeed in your strategic goals, if you're not careful it can cripple you in the long term. |
| 757 | ** For a specific example in ''V,'' annexed cities generate massive amounts of unhappiness regardless of how you acquire them. So this could lead to a situation where you're going for a peaceful victory, another nation attacks you, you fight entirely defensively and crush the invading force badly enough that they offer multiple cities in their peace terms, and if you don't turn it down the new cities add so much unhappiness that your civ is in rebellion for dozens of turns until you build courthouses. Which will ''also'' take longer due to the massive production penalty for rebellion. On top of ''that,'' the defeated nation will usually denounce you even if they were the aggressor, causing a reputation hit among the other civs. So your chances of victory are now torpedoed when you did nothing but defend yourself and accept the offered peace terms. |
| 758 | * RandomEvent: |
| 759 | ** ''I'' had a number of random disasters that could strike your cities. Some of them could not be prevented, such as earthquakes which destroy a random improvement. Others, however, ''could'' be prevented if a certain improvement existed in the city. City walls prevented floods, barracks prevented pirates from stealing food and halting production, aqueducts prevented fires destroying other improvements or plagues causing population loss, and temples prevented volcanoes. |
| 760 | ** ''IV'''s expansions included random events. 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. |
| 761 | ** ''V'' uses this for city-state requests, especially when they ask for a certain resource or want another city state eliminated. The Vanilla Enhanced Mod for ''V'' adds events similar to ''IV''. |
| 762 | ** ''Gathering Storm'' adds random natural disasters, from floods and droughts to hurricanes and volcanic eruptions. Their initial frequency and severity can be changed during game set-up, and as climate change occurs, they gradually grow more frequent. While they can cause significant localised damage, especially if they hit a city directly, they can also fertilise the tiles they hit and permanently increase their yields. |
| 763 | ** The New Frontier Pass is set to include an "Apocalypse" mode, which adds even more random disasters, including forest fires and meteor strikes, but also subverts it by allowing you to purchase Soothsayers, special religious units who can actually trigger natural disasters in enemy territory. |
| 764 | * RandomlyGeneratedLevels: There's a selection of such maps; Pangaea, Continents, Archipelago, Fractal, etc. The randomness makes exploration an important part of the early game, to scout the shape and quality of the land and also to find your neighbors and, from ''V'' onwards, natural wonders. Some games/add-ons have preset maps too. |
| 765 | * RecurringElement: Across the series, the ocean and rivers have been associated with profit as much as with sea travel. Usually this was simply represented as water and river tiles granting more gold by default, but around ''V'' and ''VI'' this changed to an enhancement to trade routes. Many coastal Wonders have something to do with commerce, the "Exploration" Civic tree in ''V'' was half-naval power, half trade bonuses, and the retirement abilities of Great Admirals in ''VI'' are often similar to those of Great Merchants. |
| 766 | * RecycledSoundtrack: Several cases-- |
| 767 | ** The main theme and music used in the OpeningNarration for ''I'' makes a return with said narration in ''IV''. |
| 768 | ** ''II'' took Montezuma's theme from ''I'' and made it a {{Leitmotif}} for the game itself, while an alternate take ("Tenochtitlan Revealed") is part of the in-game soundtrack. (This was also done for other ''I'' leaders who had original music: Hammurabi's theme became "Hammurabi's Code," Ramesses' theme became "Harvest of the Nile," Caesar's theme became "Augustus Rises," Alexander's theme became "Aristotle's Pupil," Mao's theme became "The Shining Path," and Gandhi's theme became "Gautama Ponders.") |
| 769 | ** ''IV'' specifically brings back the leitmotifs from ''I'' for most of the returning leaders: specifically Ramesses, Caesar, Montezuma, Elizabeth, Napoleon, Frederick, Stalin and Mao. For Ramesses and Stalin, their songs were first used by Hatshepsut and Peter before they got added to the game in expansions. |
| 770 | ** Similarly, the funeral dirge that plays in ''II'' when a civilization (whether it's yours or another) is destroyed comes from the game over sequence from ''I''. The theme came back again in ''IV'', but this time as Bismarck's theme. |
| 771 | * RedshirtArmy: "Nationhood" allows you to draft military units, but they are less effective than ones built the normal way and cost population. |
| 772 | * RecurringExtra: Several American native tribes. Most notable are the Cherokee and Arawak, who appeared in ''Colonization'' and were featured as City-States in "Conquest of the New World", a scenario in ''V''. |
| 773 | * ReedRichardsIsUseless: In some games in the series, you can research nuclear fusion, the panacea of energy technology. What can you use it for? Spaceship engines and [[InstantAwesomeJustAddMecha Giant Death Robots.]] |
| 774 | * RegionalRiff: The soundtrack for ''Civ VI'' consists of your civ's "main" EvolvingMusic and secondary pieces, combined with those of your neighbors. So depending on who you're playing as and who you ended up next to, the music could be "Scotland the Brave" on [[EverythingsLouderWithBagpipes bagpipes]], "Waltzing Matilda" with didgeridoos, Mongolian throat-singing, "Kalinka" on the balalaika, and "Bayisa" with an [=isiZulu=] chorus. |
| 775 | * RequisiteRoyalRegalia: The royalty of course wear their grand robes, capes, and {{cool crown}}s. |
| 776 | * RidiculouslyFastConstruction: Builders in ''VI'' create all terrain improvements instantly, though they can only make a few before they disappear (the exact number can be increased in several ways). |
| 777 | * RippedFromTheHeadlines: The ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''V'' (released in 2012) includes several references to the "Mayan apocalypse" conspiracies, since the Maya were added as a playable civilisation. |
| 778 | * RockBeatsLaser: |
| 779 | ** 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 ''II'', a veteran phalanx (+50% strength) in a mountain-top (x3 defence) city with walls (x3 defence) would win more often than not against anything less than a tank. |
| 780 | ** Further, there are some "auto win" situations, as in ''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). ''V'' did this on water prior to the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion. Any embarked land unit can be instantly killed by any ship moving on them. Also made worse by inconsistent unit range scaling: riflemen, modern infantry and tanks are intended to be late-game counterparts of early game infantry and cavalry (swordsmen and cavalry, etc) so they are melee units with no ranged attack capability, while archers and crossbowmen (and the English Longbow deserves a special mention for having 3 range) have at least 2 range and can attack these modern units without fear of enemy retaliation. Even more strangely, in ''V'', the late-game counterpart of archers, the machine gun, has only 1 range. You essentially lose 1 range in exchange for (much) more firepower when upgrading archers into machine guns. It's generally worth it, but could make you lose battles in some edge cases. |
| 781 | ** In ''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 [[DebugMode World Builder]] and your warrior will defeat it. |
| 782 | ** In the first two games, aircraft were moveable units. Hence you had surreal things like a phalanx beating a bomber. |
| 783 | * RuthlessModernPirates: In later games, particularly ''V'' and ''VI'', this is what barbarians become once you hit the more modern tech ages. Their spiky tribal outposts become a more modern shantytown and they keep pace technologically with you, deploying more advanced units to harass your civilization. And since barbarian camps on the coast put out ships as well as land units, expect them to do actual piracy on your sea trade routes. |
| 784 | * SacrificedBasicSkillForAwesomeTraining: If you beeline for key technologies and civics, you can easily end up in odd situations like being in the middle of the industrial revolution without ever having figured out that wheel thing your neighbors keep talking about. |
| 785 | * SandIsWater: Many game mods substitute different types of terrain for oceans. For example, the ''Test of Time'' [[LevelInTheClouds fantasy cloud world has sky]] with SolidClouds, the Sci-fi orbital map has space, and a ''{{Franchise/Dune}}''-based mod uses sand for the "ocean" terrain, while using, respectively, clouds, orbital platforms, and rocky terrain as "land". |
| 786 | * 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. |
| 787 | * SayYourPrayers: ''Baba Yetu'' from ''Civ IV'' is the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, but the singer isn't dying but paying gratitude to the Almighty. |
| 788 | * SchizoTech: A particularly skilled player can roll over his spear-equipped enemies with legions of tanks. (Well, all except That One Unit...) Just like Japan did in real life. |
| 789 | ** This is bound to happen in any game where one player runs away with the science race. What could be more satisfying than crushing enemy spearmen with [[HumongousMecha Giant Death Robots]]? |
| 790 | ** This problem was noticeably worse before the concept of technological eras was further developed in ''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. |
| 791 | ** 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]]." |
| 792 | ** While tech trading was taken out of ''V'', it is possible to get units that would logically need a technology you don't have. For example, you can make Chariot Archers without Archery, Ironclads without Sailing, or Gatling Guns without Gunpowder. |
| 793 | ** Resources can work either way in ''III'': India's elite unit, the War Elephant, can be built without access to ivory (represented as an elephant on the map). Samurai require both horses and iron despite not being mounted units. Saltpeter is needed to build Musketmen but not Riflemen (the notion being that industrial production supplants native saltpeter as a source); however, on the other hand, a civilization that has oil but not coal still cannot build railroads (diesel or oil-fired steam locomotives apparently aren't a thing in ''III's'' 'verse). Many of these were fixed in ''IV'' (War Elephants require ivory, Samurai replace Macemen instead of Knights and don't require horses, Saltpeter was removed entirely), but you still can't build railroads without Coal. |
| 794 | ** A 2020 update for ''VI'' includes an option to randomize the order of the tech tree within a given era, making it possible to develop a technology before its logical prerequisite (to pick a simple example, Advanced Flight before regular Flight, meaning you theoretically know how to make a jet engine, but not the hangar to build it in). |
| 795 | * SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: ''IV'' has a demographics section, and most of it is alright. However, the size in square miles is ridiculously low compared to what it should be. For instance, in an Earth map that ships with ''Beyond the Sword'', you can own all of China, Mongolia, Korea, Siberia and Afghanistan, and it'll give you 441,000 square miles. In real life, that's only the size of Colombia. Population amounts shown in the demographics tend to be fairly low as well. |
| 796 | * ScoringPoints: Each civ in a game is scored based on how many wonders, techs, and tiles of land they have. This doesn't always signify who has the upper-hand, but it's an okay indication of a civ's development, and decides the winner if the game goes on for too long. In most games, researching Future Tech only provides bonus points; ''IV'' is the exception, as it added happiness and health with each Future Tech, which added up fast, but it went back to being points-only in ''V''. |
| 797 | * ScrewTheMoneyThisIsPersonal: Other civilizations adjust their asking price for trade goods based on how much they like you and how big of a threat you are. Alienate them enough and they'll refuse to sell you anything for any price. |
| 798 | * ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: If you're rich enough you can do most anything, including paying off faction leaders for technology, cities and resources, and rushing to complete city improvements in a single turn when normally they would take dozens. Alternately, ''Screw The Rules, I Have Faith'' in ''VI''; you ''have'' to use Faith to buy certain units, but you can also use it to buy religious buildings. |
| 799 | * SeaOfSand: ''5'' and ''6'' depict desert terrain as barren sand and desert hills as sand dunes, meaning that civs often build mines on the latter. |
| 800 | * SecondPlaceIsForLosers: In ''V'', if your capital has been seized by storm and every other city you founded ''razed to the ground'', you're treated to a picture of the crumbling remains of your once-proud empire, now crushed under the sands of time, and a message regarding your loss. If you lead a prosperous empire through the millennia but then get peacefully edged-out by someone else, you get the same picture and message. |
| 801 | * SecretAIMoves: Most games have something the AI can do that the human cannot. |
| 802 | ** In ''II'', the AI can produce military units at will, units with multiple abilities[[note]]For example, they did not need a Diplomat to bribe your military unit; any regular unit could do it[[/note]], stealth units[[note]]For example, unlike run-of-the-mill units, stealth bombers and trade convoys could move past enemies without attacking; the AI will give this ability to ALL their units[[/note]], and teleportation nukes[[note]]If you had any of the 8 spaces around a city without some sort of unit on it, the AI could magically create a NUKE and teleport it to one of these squares and send it into the heart of the city regardless of special anti-nuke SDI units in the city[[/note]]. This could happen at the standard difficulty as well, but to a much smaller degree. |
| 803 | ** Diplomacy-wise in ''V'', they can tell you to move your units away from their borders, giving you the option to declare war immediately, or promise to never declare. Picking the latter and then declaring war before the promise expires hurts relations with every other civ. |
| 804 | ** Trade deals are a pile of HeadsIWinTailsYouLose in favor of the computers, though it's not quite as bad in ''V'' with its expansions. If other civs dislike you, they will give you very grudging prices for anything you try to trade them; and if you're friends with them, they'll ask for a gift of gold or a spare resource. And if ''they'' have something ''you'' need!... Well! Hope you enjoy being rejected and accused of "making an arrogant demand" for the next 100 turns or so. |
| 805 | *** As of ''Gods and Kings'' the AI will usually suggest renewing expired treaties like open borders. Which is nice, except they will sometimes tell you that they no longer like the original treaty and demand you add more on your end. |
| 806 | ** For ''Revolution'', you have things like AI spies being totally invisible (unless it's one they captured in the field from you), being able to remove settled Great People from cities and relocate them, the ability to defend a city with a 0 defense unit like a Spy/Great Person (to clarify, even though the 0 defense unit will always lose, you still have to have enough units to ''attack it'' else they keep the city; If it happens to '''you''', the city and all 0 def units in will be captured when your last defender dies to an attacking unit), and being able to move naval or air units into your territory/block worked tiles without causing a war. There are also a host of abilities which are more akin to full-blown cheating, like unit teleportation around the map into any fog of war tile, but these were owned up to by the dev team as necessary to save on performance that proper logistical behavior would eat up on the weaker home video game consoles. |
| 807 | * SequelEscalation: {{Inverted|Trope}} with ''V'', in its vanilla, pre-expansion form anyway: no religion, no units stacked on top of each other (except for one military and one non-military unit), a less-arcane Social Policies system to replace the Civics, and only one tile improvement allowed on a tile at a time (plus roads). The intent was to clear out a lot of the cruft that had built up in the series. Religion and more complex features were added back in by the expansions, but even then, they tended to be easier to grasp than they were in ''IV''. |
| 808 | * SequelHook: After the release of another Sid Meier game, winning a round of ''Civilization V'' gives you a summary screen with three options: return to the main menu, [[JustOneMoreLevel "Just... One... More... Turn!"]], and "Go Beyond Earth." Clicking the last opens up the Steam store page for ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth''. |
| 809 | * SeparateButIdentical: In full force in the first two games, aside from a few minor differences in AI personalities. 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). |
| 810 | * SetBonus: ExaggeratedTrope. The new "theming bonuses" from ''Brave New World'' essentially work this way. Culture Victories now depend on Tourism, which requires the creation of Great Works of Media and/or the excavation of historical artifacts. Put them in various museum buildings (mostly World Wonders, but also Museums), people come visit... ''voila'', Tourism. But each building can get a bonus depending on whether the stuff in it is 1) from different nations and/or 2) from different time periods, and ''each building has specific criteria''. Which you can only learn of [[GuideDangIt after you've built them]]. |
| 811 | ** Furthermore, you get bonuses for unlocking all the policies in a policy tree. |
| 812 | * SettlingTheFrontier: As with most FourX games, you want to create new settlements early and often. |
| 813 | * ShapedLikeItself: In V, one of the strong negative diplomatic modifiers can be "They are denouncing us". In other words, one of the contributing reasons why they don't like you is that they've said that they don't like you. |
| 814 | * ShoutOut: Many. |
| 815 | ** The picture for "The Internet" world wonder is Al Gore. |
| 816 | ** Some of the leaders' quotes are movie references ([[Film/DieHard "Now I have a machinegunner. Ho ho ho."]]). |
| 817 | ** As are some of the advisors' quotes ([[Film/{{Clerks}} "I'm not even supposed to be here today!"]]). |
| 818 | ** Every game is guaranteed to contain at least one reference to [[Music/ElvisPresley the king]]. |
| 819 | ** ''III'' will ask for confirmation when you change government types: "[[Music/TheBeatles You say you want a revolution?]]" Your choices are "You know it's gonna be alright" and "You can count me out!" |
| 820 | ** If you found enough cities that the game runs out of names, it cycles back through the list and appends "New" to them. In ''III'', however, there are two exceptions: "New Tokyo" will instead be called "[[Manga/{{Akira}} Neo-Tokyo]]", and "New Instanbul" will instead be called "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsQrKZcYtqg Not Constantinople]]" (while "New Constantinople" will be called "Not Istanbul"). This also means you can have [[WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}} New New York]], although that one may not be deliberate. |
| 821 | ** 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>!". |
| 822 | ** Also in ''IV'', if you've been at war for a while, one of the "War Weariness" descriptions is "WAR... What is it good for? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!" |
| 823 | ** The name of one of the English spies in ''V'' is [[Film/JamesBond James]]. |
| 824 | ** In ''V'' the music for the Helsinki city-state is "Ievan Polkka" by Loituma, a Finnish song best known from the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wnE4vF9CQ4 Leek Spin]] meme. |
| 825 | ** The [[CosmeticAward achievements]] for ''V'' are almost entirely [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]]. [[WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog "The World Is a Mess, and I Just Need to Rule It"]], [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 "Ruler of the Twelve Colonies"]], [[Series/DoctorWho "Exterminate! Exterminate!"]]... the list goes on. [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} And on.]] [[Franchise/StarTrek And on.]] [[Music/DaftPunk And on.]] [[Music/TheLonelyIsland And on.]] [[WebOriginal/LOLCats And on.]] [[Franchise/BackToTheFuture And on.]] [[GratuitousLatin And on.]] [[OverlyLongGag And on.]] [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Steam_achievements_in_Civ5 Here's]] a list. |
| 826 | *** The same apply for the ones found in ''VI'', complete with [[https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Steam_achievements_in_Civ6 their own list.]] |
| 827 | ** The artwork for the Sydney Opera House wonder in ''V'' [[http://i.imgur.com/3sFct.png contains TheLonelyIsland on a boat.]] |
| 828 | ** The ''V'' portrayal of UsefulNotes/OdaNobunaga is obviously a nod to {{Creator/Toshiro Mifune}}'s performance. |
| 829 | ** One of the top-tier units you can get is the [[VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown XCOM Squad]]. |
| 830 | ** In ''Civilization III'', one of Hannibal's quotes when meeting him at war is "Despite propaganda spread by my enemies, [[Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs I am NOT a cannibal]]. [[SchmuckBait Come closer]]." |
| 831 | ** In ''VI'' Gilgamesh's design makes him look like Marvel's ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules''. |
| 832 | ** In ''VI'', the quote for the Robots technology is a short "[[Film/TheTerminator I'll be back]]", without even stating the source. |
| 833 | ** One of the multiplayer options in ''VI'' is called [[Film/{{Wargames}} "Global Thermonuclear War"]]. |
| 834 | ** One of the achievements in ''VI'' is given when your Roman city loses 6 population from a Vesuvius eruption. The achievement is called [[Music/{{Bastille}} "And the Walls Kept Tumbling Down"]]. |
| 835 | %% Before adding Tycho Brahe as a Penny Arcade shout out, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe to see which one they're referring to. |
| 836 | * 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. |
| 837 | * SlapOnTheWristNuke: Nukes (the missiles, not the nuclear devices from ''II'') do ''far'' less damage to the city than they realistically should, often only destroying several buildings and knocking off a point or two of population besides the fallout. Before ''Brave New World'', they could never completely destroy a city. |
| 838 | ** In ''III'' they couldn't even totally kill units, only drop them to minimum health. Since units gain one health per turn when sitting on friendly cities, you needed to attack with a full-scale invasion force immediately afterwards for them to be useful. |
| 839 | ** Not so much in ''VI''. Nukes come in two forms: Nuclear (1 tile radius), and Thermonuclear (2 tile radius). They can be deployed from a silo improvement, missile submarine, or bomber, and any tile within range is a valid target. They destroy units outright, pillage any and all improvements and districts on the target tile and surrounding tiles out to their effective radius, reduce the city's population by the number of pillaged tiles, ''then'' leave behind Radiation in all those tiles for 20 turns. Any unit that ends its turn in Radiation takes 50 damage (and all units have 100 max health), more than they can heal in a single turn. Nuclear weapons will effectively render the area impassable and suppress a city for decades unless cleanup crews are deployed ''immediately'' after impact. |
| 840 | * SlidingScaleOfTurnRealism: Round by Round. |
| 841 | * SmartBomb: Not a recommended move, but since [[NukeEm Nukes]] have an area effect of wiping out (or heavily decimating) all units within one square of ground zero, one might use one in desperation if facing multiple stacks of units in proximity to each other, closing in on your territory and outnumbering and outgunning whatever units you have readily available for defense. The drawbacks being huge amounts of land pollution (also on all those squares) which you may need to clean up, and ensuring retaliation in kind (including by third parties disgusted by your use of nukes) if a nuclear war isn't already underway. |
| 842 | * SpaceCompression: Every world in the Civ series is much, MUCH smaller than real-life Earth. Later games have actually increased the compression levels so that games on larger maps won't take forever and/or fry your PC[[note]]in ''III'', when the game still used pre-rendered sprites, a "Huge" map (the largest size available) was 160x160, and some of the maps that came bundled with the Complete Edition went all the way up to 256x256. ''IV'' shrunk the size of Huge maps down to 128x80, and ''VI'' shrunk them further to 106x66[[/note]]. (See SuspiciouslySmallArmy below.) |
| 843 | * 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. |
| 844 | * SpiritualSuccessor: ''VideoGame/CivilizationCallToPower'' and its sequel was developed by former members of the original team and published by Creator/{{Activision}}. Some of the features found in ''Call to Power'' would be seen in ''Civilization IV'', ''V'' and ''VI''. |
| 845 | * SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic: ''I'' lets the player watch an animation at the end, showing the rival empires spreading across the world map. While it probably only counts as a disaster for the player if they lost, seeing one color expand at the expense of another almost certainly means ''someone's'' day was ruined. |
| 846 | * StandardSnippet: "''Music/AlsoSprachZarathustra''" is played when you win ''II'' by launching a spaceship. It's also a Great Work of Music in ''V''. |
| 847 | * StarshipLuxurious: In ''II'', you could launch a half-assembled, rickety ship toward Alpha Centauri, as long as it had all the most crucial components. It would almost certainly fail to reach the target, but you could still try. In ''III'', you can only launch a finished spaceship. Component list includes various important machinery... and Planetary Party Lounge, "the most expensive discotheque and museum gallery ever made", with "professional masseuses and physical therapists (...) on hand to see to the pleasures of the body". That despite the ship being also equipped with [[HumanPopsicle stasis chambers]]. |
| 848 | * StealthPun: |
| 849 | ** In ''Revolution'', the advance that makes the great person Leopold Stokowski more likely to appear is Superconductor. |
| 850 | ** The Tech quote for "Machinery" in ''IV'' is "[[DeusExMachina A god from the machine]]" |
| 851 | ** The achievement name for winning as Harold Bluetooth is "Hands Free to Victory!" |
| 852 | * StronglyWordedLetter: In ''V'', denouncements are more than this as they send a signal to other civs that [[EnemyMine they will likely have an ally in war against the denounced civ]]. There are a lot of other dialogues that do count as this though; if someone bullies a city state you are protecting, you can either forgive them, which lowers your influence with the city state, or say "you will pay for this", which keeps the city state happy, does not count as a denouncement against the bully, and basically does nothing except peeve the bully for a little while. Other actions allow you to respond "you will pay for this in time" if you want, but it has little if any effect. |
| 853 | ** ''Gods & Kings'' makes denouncements even more meaningful, as they undo certain diplomatic actions like embassies and declarations of friendship. Denouncing a civ you're friends with gives you a diplomatic penalty with every other civ in the game, even if you have every right to denounce said civ (for example, they promised to stop spying on you and then kept doing it). |
| 854 | * SubsystemDamage: Unlike in previous games where you either took an enemy city wholesale or didn't at all, in ''VI'' you can target and destroy individual districts outside the city centre to cripple parts of their industry. |
| 855 | * SuicidalOverconfidence: Zigzagged with the AI. On the one hand, if you've got a standing army of dozens of gun-toting infantry and the AI is still using horseback warriors and archers, they're ''probably'' not going to be stupid enough to declare war on you. On the other hand, if you declare war on them and predictably steamroll their civilization off the map, they ''are'' stupid enough to not throw themselves at your feet and beg for mercy, and will still snort and posture when you approach for a treaty. In ''V'' they also don't appear to take Defensive Pacts into account when judging strength, and so will eagerly throw themselves into war with a coalition that can wipe them off the map in order to fight one of the members who happens to be of lower power. Sometimes, in ''V'', the AI will actually admit how woefully outmatched they are, but note that they're just trying to slow you down when you're about to win, often by cultural victory. |
| 856 | * 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). (See SpaceCompression above.) |
| 857 | * SweetPollyOliver: In the ''Beyond The Sword'' expansion for ''IV'', the ordinary spy in earlier ages is a woman disguised as a shepherd with a fake beard. In later ages she drops the act and dons a SpyCatsuit. |
| 858 | * SymbologyResearchFailure: The Kremlin world wonder... is actually [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral St. Basil's Cathedral]]. By ''V'', this has become a RunningGag 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. |
| 859 | ** Averted in ''VI'', where St. Basil's Cathedral is a Wonder in its own right, and the Kremlin doesn't appear. |
| 860 | [[/folder]] |
| 861 | |
| 862 | [[folder:Tropes T-Z]] |
| 863 | * TacticalSuperweaponUnit: The [[HumongousMecha Giant Death Robot]] is a unique endgame "Super-unit" with greater melee strength than an army full of the next-most powerful unit, plus unmatched ranged strength, resistance to nuclear weapons, and the ability to upgrade it further with [[MechaEnablingPhlebotinum Future tech]], such as a city-busting particle beam cannon. |
| 864 | * TacticalRockPaperScissors: Starting with ''IV'', units are placed in certain categories (Mounted, Melee, Gunpowder, Siege, etc.), each of which has certain strengths and weaknesses. |
| 865 | ** ''VI'' took this a step further, adding the Ranged and Bombard distinctions between ranged units (Ranged are effective against other units but weak against city/district defenses; Bombard is the opposite) as well as "Support" units that aren't usually combat-capable by themselves, but improve nearby friendly units; e.g. a BatteringRam can be attached to melee units to increase their effectiveness against city walls. |
| 866 | * TakeOverTheWorld: The main goal of a Conquest or Domination victory if you're pursuing this. |
| 867 | ** [[AmericaTakesOverTheWorld America]][=/=][[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld China]][=/=][[JapanTakesOverTheWorld Japan]][=/=]RussiaTakesOverTheWorld: If you play their leaders and do the aforementioned actions. |
| 868 | * TakeThat: |
| 869 | ** After your score is computed, it shows where you rank among a list of historical leaders. At the top are people like UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}}, UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, Hammurabi, Charlemagne, and UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill. At the very bottom? UsefulNotes/DanQuayle. Quayle's "The future will be better tomorrow" quote is also read by Nimoy in ''IV'' when you research your first Future Tech. ''V'' has a less but still somewhat silly out-of-context Bushism spoken dramatically by Morgan Sheppard: "I think we agree, the past is over." |
| 870 | ** The announcement video for the June 2020 patch, which fixed a wide number of GameBreaker exploits and poked fun at those who had used them, was widely considered to be a veiled TakeThat towards The Spiffing Brit, whose videos had called attention to and popularised pretty much every single exploit that had been fixed. |
| 871 | * TargetSpotter: Invoked in ''V''. Siege units, missiles and aircraft have shorter sight ranges than they can hit, meaning you need another unit to move in close and reveal the hex you want to target. In ''VI'', there are dedicated support units (observation balloons, drones) that not only have a wider sight range than siege units, but they also increase the range and damage (in case of drones) of adjacent siege units. |
| 872 | * TaughtByExperience: In ''VI'' your faction can research techs and civics faster by doing things related to them. For example, having a quarry will boost research on Masonry, while successfully fighting barbarians will speed your way through developing Military Tradition. |
| 873 | * TechTree: Generally containing upwards of 80 technologies. Of course, it does take 6,000 years to climb to the top of it. You start out in the Stone Age, and eventually wind up with rockets! |
| 874 | ** In ''V'', Culture was reworked as a secondary Tech Tree with "Social Policies". If you generate enough culture, you can activate a new ability for your civ. It's balanced out by the fact that having lots of cities makes the upgrade threshold take longer to reach; in ''V'', research is accomplished directly by having a large population, so a sprawling empire will likely have more technology and less culture. The Cultural Victory prior to ''Brave New World'' is accomplished when you completely max out five social reform tracks and build a Wonder, so Cultural Victory is usually accomplished by having a smaller but very well-developed nation. |
| 875 | ** ''VI'' continues ''V'''s example by creating a parallel Civics Tree which is advanced by accumulating Culture. Just like the standard Tech Tree, the Civics Tree unlocks buildings and units, as well as governments, policy cards, Governor titles (''Rise and Fall'' onward), and diplomatic elements such as Envoys and Alliances. |
| 876 | * TheThemeParkVersion: The mainline ''Civilization'' games can be considered as the Theme Park Version of world history, but ''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. |
| 877 | * ThemeSong: "Baba Yetu" from ''Civilization IV'' became the series theme, especially after becoming the first video game theme to win a Grammy Award. |
| 878 | * ThenLetMeBeEvil: Can be invoked by the player. Once an AI starts denouncing you, it can be very hard to get back into their good books. This can lead a player to decide that, hey, since they're convinced you're beyond helping, you might as well show them what a warmongering monster ''really'' looks like. |
| 879 | * ThisIsGonnaSuck: |
| 880 | ** Deity difficulty in ''IV''. "Muahahahaha! Good luck, sucker!" |
| 881 | ** Sometimes, in ''V'', your chief rival may declare war on you if he (a) doesn't like you and (b) thinks he has no other way to win, even if the outcome is gloomy. The dialogue box effectively says, "This is gonna suck... but I need to attack you!" |
| 882 | * ThroughHisStomach: When sending a delegation to you to establish diplomatic relations, most leaders in ''VI'' will include a prepared dish originating from their lands. These can include apple pie from Teddy Roosevelt, maize and chocolate from Montezuma, cheeses and baguettes from Catherine de Medici, caviar from Peter the Great, airag from Genghis Khan, haggis from Robert the Bruce, and a-ping from Jayavarman VII. |
| 883 | * ThunderboltIron: Meteors became a thing in the Apocalypse Mode of ''Civ VI'' and while they will destroy anything they hit, they leave behind a meteor full of valuable metals that, if you collect, instantly creates a free Heavy Cavalry unit for your use. (In later stages, this can mean a tank!) |
| 884 | * ToneShift: The series as a whole has experienced several of these. |
| 885 | ** Initially, ''I'' and ''II'' had a mostly-serious tone. ''I'' in particular seemed to go for the feel of an epic narrative given its opening sequence. Dialogue with other civs (as noted elsewhere) was mostly arrogant and haughty. Elvis was much of the source of both games' sillier moments, especially in ''II'', where he acted as the Attitude Advisor on your High Council. (Though the High Council in general had their own hammy and silly moments.) |
| 886 | ** ''III'' introduced a markedly sillier tone compared to the first two games. In diplomacy, leaders tend to make a lot of in-jokes or puns regarding themselves--for example, Hannibal insisting [[Film/SilenceOfTheLambs he is not a cannibal]] when you first meet him. If you're defeated in ''this'' game, you get treated to a screen showing your civ's leader, battered and bruised, [[https://i.redd.it/qusuo0set8m41.png being used as the bullseye for a dart board]] [[TheComputerShallTauntYou while the other civ leaders mock you]]. A similar screen [[https://archive.is/DNp43/6b69a6a18d904e9e74f15a7729553c0025eb0fb4.png has them reacting poorly to being defeated]] if you win--if they weren't allied with you, that is. |
| 887 | ** ''IV'' retained the silly elements and in-jokey dialogue from ''III'' and introduced even more silliness. Putting aside units responding to orders in their corresponding civ's language, some take to SpeakingSimlish and Sim-like grunts when idle or performing actions. |
| 888 | ** ''Revolution'' got even more DenserAndWackier than ''IV''. The Sim-speak is even more pronounced in this game, even among the leaders. Barbarians have rather hammy dialogue in your encounters with them. Advisors (and other leaders!) will appear on-screen and shove each other out of the way when they have something they want to tell you and you're already speaking with someone else. |
| 889 | ** So far, ''V'' stands out from the series has having a uplifting and awe-inspiring tone, reinforced by its use of Art Deco motifs for its UI. Where the art style of ''VI'', ''Revolution'' and ''VI'' are more stylized or even cartoony, ''V'' aimed for a more realistic style. |
| 890 | ** ''VI'' takes the series back to a more stylized and LighterAndSofter tone. The art direction for the leaders, units, and individual characters wouldn't be out of place in a Pixar movie. Dialogue in diplomacy retains most of the seriousness ''V'' had, though it can have some lighter moments, such as when when leaders describe what their delegation's bringing you, or when they (or you) send an invitation to a city. |
| 891 | * TooAwesomeToUse: In ''Revolution'' (and its mobile-only sequel ''Revolution 2''), you can get an intercontinental ballistic missile that will destroy anything it hits (except for a capital city) and deal massive damage to the adjacent tiles as well. However, you can't build it- it comes with the Manhattan Project wonder, meaning there can only be ''one'' in a single game. You may rush to build the Manhattan Project out of fear that an enemy will get to it first, only to find yourself sitting on the nuke, wondering when to use it. |
| 892 | * 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!" |
| 893 | ** 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. |
| 894 | ** 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]]. |
| 895 | ** In ''V'', if the computer believes it has the upper hand in a war through some nebulous logic that apparently reaches this conclusion 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. |
| 896 | * TheTopicOfCancer: In the original game, developing a cure for cancer gave you one happy citizen in every single city, no strings attached. |
| 897 | * TranslationConvention: Averted. All of the world leaders in ''Civilization'' speak their native languages hence why you hear Julius Caesar speaking actual if not flawed Latin as opposed to [[TheQueensLatin British RP-accented English]]. |
| 898 | * UltimateShowdownOfUltimateDestiny: At its heart, ''Civ'' is a game about bringing together all the greatest national leaders of human history in a battle royale for world domination, winner takes it all. Whether that is achieved through supremacy of culture or science, diplomatic overtures to become first among equals in the United Nations, being the first nation to launch a starship and build colonies on another planet, [[MightMakesRight or simply wiping out all the competition]]. |
| 899 | * {{Understatement}}: Historical background of Fascism (as described by ''V''): "This form of government was quite popular with [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany certain]] [[UsefulNotes/FascistItaly states]] in Central Europe during the last century but other states didn't much like it, and it was ultimately abandoned after [[FinalSolution some]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII unpleasantness.]]" |
| 900 | * UnexplainedAccent: The games tend to use English-speaking voice actors who phonetically say their lines in whatever language the world leader they are voicing is speaking. This extends to figures speaking languages that are not extinct like French and Spanish. In some cases, it can get so bad a native speaker of the language will have trouble understanding what the leader in question is actually saying. |
| 901 | * UnintentionallyUnwinnable: It's possible to soft-lock the game in ''VI'' by getting two units of the same type stuck on the same tile when neither can move, such as having two Great People in a city center that's surrounded by enemies, as the game won't let you end your turn until they're not stacked on the same tile but every action you could take to get rid of one (activating them, moving them to another city, even deleting them in some cases) is blocked because they're stacked. The only way out of this is to reload an earlier autosave. |
| 902 | * UniquenessRule: |
| 903 | ** Wonders have always had some restriction. Initially all wonders were required to be unique on the entire map, while later games relaxed it for ordinary wonders to just having one per player. And no, no refunds if someone else was building the same wonder as you. |
| 904 | ** The console-only game (later ported to mobiles) ''Civilization Revolution'' only has one nuke in any single game. It's given to the player who builds the Manhattan Project wonder. It can hit any city or square on the map but leaves no fallout. |
| 905 | * UnreliableNarrator: The Civilopedia in ''IV'' 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?]]) |
| 906 | * UnsafeHaven: ''III'' contains an unused video from the security advisor, telling you not to worry because the fortress is impenetrable. |
| 907 | * UnskilledButStrong: The AIs in higher difficulties don't really improve on their skills at all, rather they simply cheat by gaining more and more advantages the higher the difficulty level is, while still falling prey to several ArtificialStupidity moments. The key to overcoming these difficulties is exploiting these flaws and using them to your advantage. |
| 908 | * UnstableEquilibrium: Present in all the 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. |
| 909 | * UrbanSegregation: ''VI'' invokes this with the districts concept for city-building. Whereas previous editions just basically piled all the buildings and wonders of a city into one tile, ''VI'' requires specific districts be built to house the appropriate building, such as a campus district for science production like libraries and universities. Placement of said district also becomes important for various reasons: for example, industrial zones get bonuses to production for adjacent infrastructure improvements like mines, but both also lower nearby tiles' appeal which affect things like a neighborhoods' usefulness in providing housing. |
| 910 | * UsedFuture: In a departure from previous ''Civilization'' games, where the Modern Era's aesthetics tended to emulate the time the [[NextSundayAD game was originally released]], ''VI'' eschews this by basing the Information Age on the late Cold War, with the majority of its late-game units being represented by decades-old vehicles whose roles have been superceded by more advanced machines in their countries of origin (i.e. "Jet Bomber" versus "Stealth Bomber"), while in contrast ''IV'' and ''V'' went as far as fielding ([[TechnologyMarchesOn then, in the case of the former]]) hypothetical units such as the railgun-wielding Stealth Destroyer and the infamous Giant Death Robot. [[note]]This was intentionally done to make their matchups with their direct predecessors less of an egregious case of RockBeatsLaser: it's easier to imagine an [[UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict M4 Sherman taking out a T-80]] or a P-51 Mustang shooting down a MIG-29 then it is a T-34 taking out a Leopard 2 or a Zero shooting down an F-22.[[/note]] Then the ''Gathering Storm'' expansion goes ahead and adds the Giant Death Robot to ''VI'' anyway, with the option of giving it a giant particle beam cannon. |
| 911 | * UselessUsefulNonCombatAbilities: Neighborhoods in ''VI'' are widely considered to be never worth building. They unlock so late in the civic tree that they're no longer useful by the time you get them, they compete for high Appeal tiles with National Parks and Seaside Resorts, and their purpose, growing population, is generally seen as a detriment past a certain point due to how amenities work. Spies can also target them for the Recruit Partisans action, one of the few legitimately dangerous actions a spy can perform. |
| 912 | * UselessUsefulSkill: Some of the Civics in ''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. Environmentalism became ''far'' more powerful in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion. |
| 913 | * VariablePlayerGoals: Any civilization can achieve any of the win conditions, but some civs have particular traits that make achieving certain goals easier than others. |
| 914 | * VastBureaucracy: Different games have found different ways to represent this: |
| 915 | ** 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. |
| 916 | ** ''IV'' replaces the corruption mechanic with city maintenance costs and Civics upkeep, largely representing the same thing. Unlike corruption (which drains a fixed proportion of a city's produced resources), the maintenance costs stay relatively static as the city grows - meaning that building a new city initially actually harms your economy, but once the city's developed the maintenance costs are negligible compared to the money the city produces. (By comparison, in the earlier games there was little reason not to grab land as quickly as possible as it would always at least produce ''something''). There's also a Bureaucracy Civic, which provides a significant boost to your civ's capital (and no other city at all). |
| 917 | ** ''V'' just gave up and made everything global; the empire ''itself'' is the basic unit of measure, instead of individual cities: |
| 918 | *** 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 placate them. However, it does cause some Fridge Logic when you realize that angry citizens in newly-conquered, say, Shanghai are being pacified by the goings-on of a theater in New York. However, it was later changed so that basic happiness buildings can't provide more happiness than there are people in that city. |
| 919 | *** 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. |
| 920 | *** National Wonders: Every civilization gets to build one, but they require that each city under your control build one of a specific structure first (everyone needs a Library to build a National College in your capital, for example) so the more cities you have, the harder it becomes to build the National Wonder. |
| 921 | * VelvetRevolution: Using the culture mechanic allows you to bloodlessly take over rival cities by simply overwhelming them. Earlier Civ games had this as you expanding your border to envelop rival cities. ''Brave New World'' for ''V'' allows this to happen when you put so much cultural pressure on a rival ideology that their citizens revolt ("We hate being Order! We're joining Autocracy instead!"). A balance patch also allows you to conquer enemy cities by force but leave their population completely untouched and receptive to their new owners when you take them, if your culture is dominant over theirs. |
| 922 | ** In the ''Rise and Fall'' expansion for ''VI'', the new Loyalty mechanic does a similar thing: your citizens aren't going to be happy if their city is on the other side of the continent a thousand miles away from your capital and are eventually going to revolt and join another Civ unless you can find ways to placate them and keep them loyal to you. |
| 923 | * VeteranUnit: Unit experience mechanics have been present in all iterations of the game to date. The first two simply had a binary distinction between "veteran" and "non-veteran"; later games have added increasingly more elaborate implementations. |
| 924 | * VideoGame3DLeap: ''IV''. Given that the series uses a top-down perspective, it was largely a Presentation Upgrade, though there were a few gameplay benefits to the switch to 3D, such as being able to zoom in and out of the map. |
| 925 | * VideoGameCaringPotential: [[UniversallyBelovedLeader "We Love The King Day celebrated in <city name>."]] |
| 926 | ** It's a part of gameplay for ''V''; a City will request a certain resource, and if you can get hold of that resource, the local populace start getting busy. |
| 927 | ** If a Civilization is defeated by another player and you liberate one of their former cities, they'll be back in the game and you'll be given a large relationship bonus for resurrecting them. |
| 928 | * VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Poison your neighbors' water supplies! Bomb farmlands and cause the starving deaths of millions! [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWzMeLdU6FA Nuke Gandhi!]] |
| 929 | ** ''Gandhi nuked me first!'' |
| 930 | ** 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. |
| 931 | ** Some civilizations (particularly in ''V'') are specifically geared towards dog-kicking, like Montezuma, who gains culture by sacrificing captured enemies, or Genghis Khan, who is designed to hunt down and destroy City-States. Also, the "Autocracy" policy track is specifically modeled after conquering the world by force and all of its policies are named after unfortunate things associated with fascism. |
| 932 | ** Among the Luxury resources in ''V'' is Ivory, and its tile is depicted with, of course, elephants on it. Ivory remains very much a luxury resource that improves the happiness of your Empire even when you already have discovered the Ecology tech. Same thing, of course, with the Whale tiles. Or the Fur tiles, even if those ones show animals that are not considered as endangered - foxes. (This was not the case in ''IV'' where all these resources eventually became obsolete.) On the other hand, the game lets you [[VideoGameCaringPotential pass motions in the World Congress to ban those luxuries as immoral]]. However, it also lets you ban luxury resources that aren't usually considered immoral in real life, just so you can negate the happiness benefit of another civ that is dependent on that resource. |
| 933 | ** The ''Gathering Storm'' expansion for ''VI'' adds climate change, which will slowly melt sea ice and flood low-lying regions as you pump more carbon into the atmosphere. The devs have stated you can either try to slow down the effects, or you can be a jerk and weaponise it by purposely raising sea levels and watch as all your enemies' coastal regions get flooded. |
| 934 | ** ''VI'' later added an Apocalypse Mode which adds the soothsayer, a unit that can cause natural disasters to happen. As [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk0QVqx-1Ss SpiffingBrit demonstrated]], because the AI does not take into account whether a natural disaster is actually natural or caused by you, it's perfectly possible to go around crippling rival Civs' cities by causing them to be buried under sandstorms, snowstorms, floodwater, or volcanic ash. |
| 935 | * VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: Razing a city in ''IV: Beyond the Sword'' comes with a chance of spawning a stack of highly-experienced state-of-the-art enemy units on a nearby tile, with an event message saying that the surviving dwellers of the destroyed city have formed a militia to avenge their hometown or die trying. |
| 936 | * VideoGameRandomizer: ''6'' released a "Tech and Civic Shuffle" game mode in August 2020, which randomizes the TechTree and Civic Tree when enabled. Techs and civics within each game Era are shuffled, the tree layouts are changed, and unknown techs and civics are hidden. |
| 937 | * VideoGameRemake: |
| 938 | ** ''I'' is a remake, and also a loose adaptation, of the original board game. The board game had a fixed map, with predefined city locations and resources (and was an accounting nightmare as each city had to have resources collected and recorded manually). The computer adaption allowed for map generation, free city placement, and to have the computer do the bookkeeping for you. |
| 939 | ** 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 the ''Warlords'' expansion for ''IV''. |
| 940 | * ViolationOfCommonSense: |
| 941 | ** Some of the Achievements for ''V'' require you to do deliberately counterintuitive things, like going for Cultural or Diplomatic Victory while using the Domination-focused Autocracy ideology. |
| 942 | ** Likewise, you can sometimes find yourself trying to win a Culture victory by easily becoming influential with all but ONE of your rivals (if they were able to be competitive for a good portion of the game). So, you can either wait 150 turns to become Influential (if someone doesn't win by an alternate victory path), or you can simply solve the matter by by committing ''genocide'' by removing that civilization from play (you're now Influential with all ''remaining'' civilizations). As soon as you take over the last of that pesky civilization's cities, the Victory window will pop up congratulating you on your culture victory. |
| 943 | ** If you've got a nuclear weapon and a bunch of enemies about to take one of your cities, launching said weapon is a perfectly viable way to clear out those enemies. In RealLife citizens would probably object to the government ''launching a nuclear weapon upon one of its own urban areas'', but in ''Civ'' all it does is shut down production for a few turns (which, considering the other option of losing it entirely, is definitely the much better option). |
| 944 | ** ''VI'' added Apocalypse Mode which adds the soothsayer, a unit that can cause natural disasters to happen. Normally a natural disaster will be met with grumbling from a player as all their improved tiles and districts get pillaged, but if you never built or improved anything this negative is basically not a thing, leaving only the positive of improved tile yield. So, the solution is ([[SarcasmMode obviously]]) to cause flood upon flood or volcanic eruption after eruption to improve food output to ridiculous levels. |
| 945 | ** The way Diplomatic Victory was implemented in ''VI'' leads to a few of these: |
| 946 | *** By racking up grievances with other civilizations then declaring a surprise war against them you can prompt them to request military aid from the World Congress. You can then vote to approve this aid request and give aid to the person you just declared war on, getting diplomatic victory points for it. You can even pay for this aid with the gold you got by pillaging your victim's territory! Winning by doing this repeatedly makes the victory cutscene [[{{Irony}} wonderfully ironic]] as it praises your commitment to peace and cooperation despite your spending the whole game being a bully. |
| 947 | *** A good way to win the Climate Accords and their associated diplomatic victory points if you don't have access to carbon recapture is to build or buy coal power plants for the sole purpose of decommissioning them, since the Accords only care about [[ExactWords how many you decommissioned]], not how many you decommissioned relative to the number you had before. This also makes it possible to win the Climate Accords while increasing your [=CO2=] output. |
| 948 | *** In late-game World Congress votes there is a proposal to give or remove 2 Diplomatic Victory points to or from a civilization. If you're on the verge of a Diplomatic Victory then the ideal option is to vote to take points away from yourself, since every other civilization, even your allies, will band together to vote to take your points away. Voting against yourself means you'll lose two points then immediately get one back for siding with the majority, halving the impact while saving your favor to gain points by winning other votes. |
| 949 | * ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption: When dealing with barbarians. |
| 950 | ** At higher difficulties, anything other than a Domination Victory becomes practically impossible. |
| 951 | * WarElephants: |
| 952 | ** In ''II'', they become available when you discover Polytheism, for some reason. In ''III'', they're India's special unit, replacing knights. |
| 953 | ** In ''IV'', they become available when you discover Construction, but you also need access to Ivory. |
| 954 | ** Three separate versions show up as special units in ''V''; the standard War Elephant replacing the Chariot Archer for India, Naresuan's Elephant replacing Siam's Knight, and African Forest Elephant replacing Carthage's Horseman. |
| 955 | ** Three elephant unique units appear in ''VI''; the Varu replacing the Horseman for India, the Domrey replacing the Trebuchet for the Khmer, and the Voi Chiến replacing the Crossbowman for Vietnam. |
| 956 | * WarForFunAndProfit: |
| 957 | ** The Honor social policy tree in ''V'' after the 1.4.X patch. Adopting it provides a Culture bonus similar to what Montezuma's special ability gives (and stacks with it, doubling the Aztec's Culture output) and finishing it allows 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. |
| 958 | ** Something that the A.I. civilizations invoke in ''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 lose some of the military units it has been paying maintenance on, and gets 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. |
| 959 | ** The ''Civ IV'' AI actually factors this into its (rather complex) war planning. If an AI is under economic stress, undoubtedly due to their tendency to overproduce units, it will check for a valid land target (at least 8 border tiles abutting each other) among other things like power and disposition and possibly attack. The goal would be to launch either a limited war to pillage improvements for gold and get compensation for a peace treaty, or a total war to capture more profitable territory and acquire city capture bounty. Coveting thy neighbor's land indeed! |
| 960 | * TheWarJustBefore: In ''Civilization V'', a common warmonger strategy in single-player games is to accept a peace treaty offered by an AI opponent, and then use the time of guaranteed peace to rebuild and upgrade their military. Once the peace treaty expires, injured units have healed, new units have been built, and the player is ready to roll out for another war. |
| 961 | * WarmUpBoss: Barbarians in ''Revolution'' and ''Revolution 2'' play this role. There's usually Barbarian villages not far from your starting position, so you're likely to run into them before you contact other civilizations. Unlike other most other games in the franchise, you actually engage in dialogue with them--but because of their HardCodedHostility, it largely consists of them gloating about what they're going to do to you, cursing you for your victories over them, or dismissing them as unimportant. Barbarians also have an "Uncivilized" modifier that reduces the defense of their units by half compared to a comparable unit built by a civilization. |
| 962 | -->'''Norte Chico:''' (Player), we Barbarians laugh at your excessive height and need for 'culture'. You will soon feel the sting of our pointy blowguns! |
| 963 | * WaterSourceTampering: Poisoning a city's water supply is a potential espionage action in ''II''. Succeeding reduces the city's population. |
| 964 | ** It's also possible in ''IV'', and pulling it off slaps them with a massive health penalty for a time. |
| 965 | * WeWillHavePerfectHealthInTheFuture: |
| 966 | ** One of the wonders in ''I'' is CureForCancer, a monument that bestows +1 happiness. |
| 967 | ** In ''III'' and ''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. |
| 968 | * WesternZodiac: An astrological star chart provides a background in the map and main menu, and several of the signs[[note]]Scorpio, Cancer, Leo, Pisces, Aquarius, and Taurus[[/note]] are used as generic religious icons for custom religions. |
| 969 | * WhatTheHellPlayer: Try to perform certain illegal actions in the game, and you'll get some smart-aleck game notifications. |
| 970 | ** For ''II'': |
| 971 | *** Trying to build a city at sea: |
| 972 | ---->"It may surprise you to learn that cities cannot be built at sea." |
| 973 | *** Trying to airlift naval units: |
| 974 | ---->"Ships cannot be airlifted, silly." |
| 975 | ** In a slightly more serious vein, in ''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. |
| 976 | *** On the other hand, a civilization has to go out of its way in terms of being a jackass for this to happen. Unless you're the Mongols, and you're ''supposed'' to be a terror to city-states. (The Mongols in ''V'' get a combat bonus to fighting city-states.) |
| 977 | * WholePlotReference: Many scenarios reference the plots of other works: |
| 978 | ** ''Beyond the Sword's'' "Next War" is basically ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' with another state added for balance. |
| 979 | ** Another ''[=CtP2=]'' RPG-like scenario essentially follows TheMagnificentSevenSamurai plot. |
| 980 | * WonTheWarLostThePeace: Taking cities through conquest is certainly rewarding, but it can result in large happiness and gold deficits depending on the situation. In ''V - Brave New World'', each city under a player's control, including puppets, makes techs and policies cost a little more science/culture to unlock, resulting in a tough choice between keeping a small city without much potential, or burning it to the ground for a temporary but large happiness hit. Too much unhappiness, and rebel barbarians appear ''and'' your own forces become less effective. In addition, if happiness levels drop ''far'' below, one of your cities will coup and convert to a happier civ, which can disrupt the boundaries of your empires. Domination victory requires having a serious majority of all the land or taking every other capital city; running an [[JustOneMoreLevel epilogue]] with happy citizenry after winning this way can be difficult in its own right. |
| 981 | * WorkerUnit: Workers and settlers. |
| 982 | * WorthyOpponent: Sometimes, the leader of an enemy nation will consider you to be this. |
| 983 | * WoundedGazelleGambit: Works well in Civilization V. If you deliberately leave your military somewhat weak, many computer opponents near you won't be able to resist taking the bait and declaring war on you. However, since it's much easier to fight a defensive war AND the computer is TERRIBLE at fighting battles, it's not too hard to get yourself set up in a situation where you can rapidly upgrade your defenses to fight the opponent off, and the humiliated opponent will sue for peace often offering you a city of theirs in return. You've just expanded your empire, annihilated their troops, given your troops some valuable experience points, and they are the ones who have taken the reputation loss. Bonus points if you can trick an enemy into doing this while having the Great Wall and/or forcing them to march through rough terrain just to approach your cities while you gleefully pick them off at range. |
| 984 | * WriterOnBoard: |
| 985 | ** Some of the Civics descriptions in ''IV'' are a bit... odd. They all attempt to list the pros and cons of each civic. The one for Pacifism basically denounces it as hypocrisy. [[DemocracyIsBad And guess what the one about Universal Suffrage says]]. Slavery has its advantages. Interestingly, they couldn't think of anything good to say about the caste system. |
| 986 | ** Early games had a serious love for the GreenAesop, with pollution and Global Warming being punishing to {{Anvilicious}} levels. Toned down, but never truly abandoned, in later entries. |
| 987 | * YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: As of ''Civ VI: Gathering Storm'', strategic resources work this way. The same expansion also adds Power, though unlike other games it simply gives you bonus yields rather than penalizing you if you don't have enough. |
| 988 | * ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: |
| 989 | ** In ''IV'', Zeppelins are unlocked by the late-mid-game Physics tech, while heavier than air ships are unlocked later via the Flight tech (not ''that'' far after Physics, but some turns' worth). Depending on the game's 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...). |
| 990 | ** A much more true-to-the-trope example is the "Empires of the Smoky Skies" scenario included with the ''Gods & Kings'' expansion for ''V''. This takes place in a {{Steampunk}} world filled with giant landships, sparking tesla-coils and, yes, Zeppelins. They basically take over the role of combat helicopters in the vanilla game, including their utility as anti-tank (or anti-huge-steampowered-monstrosity, as it were) weapons, and a vulnerability to fighter-planes (in this case, Red Baron-esque double-deckers). The upgraded version is even an AirborneAircraftCarrier! |
| 991 | * ZergRush: Seen in ''VI'''s religious combat. Because a converted city isn't actually a blow to an opponent (they still get all the yields of the city) it's trivially easy for them to just buy a missionary and convert it back. Instead of doing it one city at a time, the most effective way of shutting down a competing religion is to build up a force of missionaries then send them all to convert every city at once making it so it's physically impossible for your opponent to undo the damage since they don't have any cities left to buy missionaries that aren't your religion. |
| 992 | [[/folder]] |
| 993 | ---- |
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