Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

I played a game on Deity, Huge, Marathon, Archipelago... and Apocalypse Mode. That last one made things even more brutal than I anticipated, the first phase of Global Warming came on Turn 2, phase 2 during the Medieval. By the end huge chunks of land were disappearing, it was pretty funny and it put me even further ahead because I could respond to the losses better than the AI, settling in newly vacated areas and such. I launched the Exoplanet Expedition, but I was getting weary, repairing cities was a Sisyphean task and others were close to a Diplomatic Victory, so I made sure to win that way instead. Even on Deity, if I survive the early period, I can pull ahead and usually win.

I was attacked by my two neighbours shortly after meeting them, and just managed to hold them off and make them sue for peace. That was expected. Much odder is that for the rest of the game, I never got into a single war with anyone, while they were happy to fight each other. More than ever, I wish that instead of giving the AI more resources (I saw that one had three cities before I had two citizens), higher difficulty would make them Gang Up on the Human. Not entirely hostile, that would defeat the point of diplomacy, but becoming harder to please and more eager to fight, or a balance of power where the more allies and friends you have the more hostile the others become. The general placidity fed into the Zeno's race feeling I have about late game (amplified in Marathon, but present in all of them) where the longer it goes on, the more cities and units I have to manage (and the AI, making turns last longer), but the less effect it all has because so much inertia has gathered. Some of this is inevitable in a game like this, but occasional wars would do a lot to relieve the sameness.

This was my first time circumnavigating the globe in the Classical age.

Honestly I haven't tried them enough for a proper consensus yet but most island focused maps seem to end up as just continent maps with one to three tile islands spread around. Not really what I was looking for.

I am honestly not sure how Archipelago, Island Plates, Fractal and Splintered Fractal differ. All produce islands of varied size that are sometimes compact circles and sometimes long and spindly, and the continents never make any sense (it's not that each continent is broken up that is the problem, that's inevitable, it's that sometimes a landmass is cut straight across by a continent divide and islands may belong to a continent they are nowhere near). I think fractal maps are a little more inclined to have narrow isthmuses and long mountain ranges but that's it.

Will we ever have map generation that takes into account how the underlying plate tectonics shape the land? It would have to be very simplified but it could be interesting.

On the matter of continents, the game uses a variety of genuine names for present or theorised continents, but it gets weird when the same world has "America" and "South America", or "Pangea" and "Novopangea".

Edited by Reymma on Mar 3rd 2024 at 2:03:11 PM

In principle, I don't think there's any reason why the map generator couldn't generate continental plates and their interactions first, and then build the map on top of it.

That’d be a pretty cool mod actually, a map generator that makes sure continents are divided by some mix of waterways, mountains and narrow land.

The problem is that to be reflective of tectonic and landscaping processes, the map would have to be a lot more detailed. It would need detailed topography to set out drainage basins and river courses, distinguish between metamorphic and igneous bedrock, map out rainfall to determine forests and deserts. And then fit that onto a hexagonal grid. Creating that level of detail would not only tax most computers, the appeal of the game has always been that players can understand the map at a glance. So I don't know how much realism could be added without harming playability.

However, one thing I would like that shouldn't be too complicated is to have the landscape be less passive. By which I mean that if forest or marsh is removed, after a while they will return if the tile is not being used. That deer move about over the centuries. That too much farming and forest clearance creates marshes. Or that a civilisation's traits are determined by the environment where it started, instead of being pre-set and given a starting place in accordance with them.

Related to this, when I see a city reduced to one population by disasters, I wish it would go all the way and just wipe it out, leaving behind archeological finds. Say that Vesuvius only erupts once or twice per game, but when it does it destroys any towns within two tiles. The game is oddly reluctant to have cities destroyed outside of Apocalypse Mode, I can't even disband cities I have taken over whose placement I don't like (in earlier games you could do this by having them produce settlers until the last population was used up).

Something I'd like to have considered in later games is that Great Persons crop up at random, but have limited lifespan and the onus on the player is to make good use of them in that span. Say that any battle can create a general or admiral on top of experience for the unit, you can use them to buff units or bring them back to a city to help train (i.e., pre-promote) new units, and when they die they create a national relic, but if they die in battle your enemy gets it and you must fight/steal/trade it back. Building a district can create an engineer, they can accelerate construction in the city and after they have enough experience can move on to wonders. Artists and writers do best if brought to campuses, theaters and natural wonders around the world (maybe even sending them to other nations) with all the associated risks of travel. It would make them feel more like real people than a button you press to get a bonus.

Alert! EA just dumped a lot of classic strategy games on Steam for cheap (with no need to sign up for EA Play), and among them is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, currently on sale for two whole American dollars. Just be forewarned that it'll probably take some fiddling to change the screen resolution to fit modern monitors.

Which Civilization game is the easiest to just pick up and get into?

V, in my opinion: the one-unit-per-tile rule simplifies combat, and you don't have to worry about district placement because that wasn't added until 6.

Problem is that the modern Civ games have a LOT of DLC, still being sold at full price years later. There's also the thing where every nation in Civ V and VI has its own distinct superpower that can drastically alter how it plays - being able to cross ocean tiles from Turn 1, treating woodlands as having roads through them, recruiting defeated barbarian units, etc.

I'd argue that Civ IV is easier to get into, since the civs all have unique units and structures to help them stand out, but are using two from the same pool of general traits (Expansive, Agricultural, Creative, Philosophical, etc) that are easier to wrap your head around. Also, you can pick up Civ IV: The Complete Edition and have all its content for $30, which is what one of Civ V's two expansions is selling for by itself.

Though Steam is offering a Civ V bundle, but since I already have everything in it, I can't see what it's priced at.

I am more with Sivartis on this one: V is much simpler to get into than VI. Most of the base features are there (and some are actually better - the roads, the workers...), but map organization is way less of a puzzle when it comes to placing districts, improvements or wonders.

It does not have as much depth, but it is pleasant enough to play, with enough Civ flavor not to feel like you've done them all after two games.

I quite like VI's district tetris, even though it's hardly realistic (how much space does a theatre need?). It gives importance to planning out cities in a way that would be difficult without it. However I agree that it's complicated, and the fact that it locks in your layout (at least until global warming starts nibbling at them) makes for aggravating "what will I need in two thousand years' time?" decisions. It gimps cities on islands or by mountains. And it just looks cluttered. For the next game, I would like them to cut back a bit on the number of tiles a city uses in this way, by merging some (like preserve and holy site) in favour of specialised, mutually exclusive buildings, making it possible to demolish them, placing wonders on districts instead of by them, or making some of them only active for some period of history.

If you buy VI, buy it with all the DLC included.

I played the latest scenario between Tomyris and Cyrus. I expected something vaguely historical and was surprised to see the Galápagos there. For once I got everything in place for a religion victory, then I realised this scenario only allows domination. Won that with little difficulty, but by then it was Future Era. It was quite a change of pace after playing Marathon games, everything happened so fast.

However using religious units reminded me of one reason I don't like the one-unit-per tile approach: it's tedious to move large forces, in Call to Power I could stack them together and they would move as one. If the next game doesn't have stacking, it might be worth making an option to "snake" units over large distances. However it would also help a lot to simply fix the pathfinding.

I do think they went way too hard on adjacencies in Civ 6.

Though perhaps rather than ditching them completely in the next game, instead as you develop better transportation technologies adjacency bonuses are applied at longer and longer ranges.

So in the ancient era it's true adjacency. Then expands to 2 tiles once you start getting proper roads, with civilizations like the Romans getting 3 tile ranges. In the modern era it extends all the way out to 4 or 5 tiles. Partly to reflect motor vehicles, and partly to give you more flexibility in placing stuff in the late game when your territory is more crowded.

I also agree that wonders should be built inside districts and city centers rather than outside them. It's more than a little silly that famously urban wonders are often built well away from the city centers.

There's also a bit of frustration for newer players who may realize that a new wonder - a major Civ feature - they can build for the first time can't go anywhere on their territory. In V, aside from the common "on the coast" ones, there only were a handful of terrain requirements - maybe not enough, I can only think of Machu Pichu, Petra and Neuch - but in VI they went way too far in the opposite direction IMO. I hope they strike a balance in VII where you don't automatically get locked out of some Wonders because of your starting position.

Edited by Bexlerfu on Mar 10th 2024 at 11:20:12 AM

I rarely see the AI build Zimbabwe, and never Amundsen-Scott. You pretty much have to place a city for the express purpose of building the latter. I mentioned earlier that they could replace the tile restrictions with having enough resources, which would alleviate matters.

I don't know if extending adjacency ranges over time would help. It might complicate things further because the player has to take into account more tiles and how it will change. However one idea I didn't mention above would be to make the districts entirely regional: all buildings and bonuses apply to cities within 6 tiles, and you can't build any more of that district within that range. Placement would still be a challenge, but it would cut back on visual clutter at least.

I mentioned changing how Great Persons work, but what if Heroes took their place as someone you had to pay to recruit for a time, like Conan in Hyborian War, and they changed with era? I say this because the heroes fit in fine in the Ancient and Classical Eras, but look very out place from the Renaissance onwards. It would go like:

Ancient and Classical: the current roster except for Arthur.

Medieval and Renaissance: Arthur, Momotaro (after defeating an enemy, he can return to a city and give it a boost of food), Joan of Arc (can only be purchased with Faith, has several charges as a missionary).

Industrial and Modern: Paul Bunyan (can build improvements, gets charges by defeating enemies or clearing features), Giuseppe Garibaldi (can only be hired if you are at war with someone you have major grievances against), John Henry (builds railroads between any two cities he walks to).

I kind of like the idea of era-based Heroes and losing access to any unclaimed ones.

Edit: Older Civilization titles did something similar with World Wonders: they were era-specific and expired after a certain amount of time. Not sure I preferred that, but it is a little weird to have the Terracotta Army doubling your output of tanks.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2024 at 9:07:56 AM

It's probably best that wonders don't become obsolete in 6. Spending fifteen to thirty turns building something that will functionally cease to exist in short order would be really frustrating.

You could balance that by making World Wonders cheaper and by giving them persistent effects related to Culture or Tourism even after their mechanical benefits expire. I'm just saying that if the goal is historical verisimilitude, having the Temple of Zeus built in the Renaissance is a bit weird.

I guess that's getting into the question of how much you want the game to feel like history. And this is a game where you can have the Aztec conquer Spain or Scythia win the space race, but it's not like it's wholly divorced from history, either.

In fairness, many of the Wonders in earlier eras have one-time rather than permanent effects. Those cause fewer balance issues for the late game.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2024 at 11:59:52 AM

My vision of the game (as someone who wants a story-making sandbox rather than a balanced multiplayer game) would have wonders built faster, with the strongest effects being one-time or within the following turns. Then most of them would end up destroyed by a war or disaster, but the site would retain some tourism value. I might even make them specific to each culture, so that there is no competition to build them, instead making more world first achievements that make sense (we already have discovering natural wonders, circumnavigation and each stage of the space race, a few more could be added like splitting the atom or solving cubic equations that would require a combination of Great Persons, districts and resource investments).

There are only three Wonders in the game that provide only one time benefits: Stonehenge, Colossus, and Statue of Liberty in the base game.

Edited by tclittle on Mar 13th 2024 at 9:11:35 AM

However the Statue of Zeus and Mahabodhi Temple give their most important benefit at construction. Also fan guides note that the loyalty effect of the Statue of Liberty is actually counterproductive: if a city is big enough to make it, it is unlikely to have loyalty problems, but it will kick in if someone else conquers it).

In a neat analogy for real life, the Temple of Artemis tends to get weaker over time as you remove camps and pastures.