Trivia / Civilization

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • VI prominently features a Leonardo da Vinci quote anticipating the majesty of flight; the opening cinematic is set to a chorale rendition of the original Italian passage. Except Leonardo never actually said it. The entire thing probably originated in a 1965 documentary.
  • The "Nuclear Gandhi Integer Overflow" story apparently originated as an example of this, conflating the stock "OUR WORDS ARE BACKED BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS!" message appended incongruously to every diplomatic response with an apparent tendency for Gandhi to suddenly become extremely aggressive during the modern age. Sid Meier himself and Brian Reynolds have since debunked the claim that it was caused by a coding error and confirmed that Gandhi's AI was working as intended, as even the "peaceful" civs would use nukes if backed into a corner; they suggested that it was just the memory of being nuked by Gandhi of all people stood out more in people's minds just because of how out-of-character it seemed, and Gandhi's less aggressive, inward-focused AI was more likely to get to nukes than more aggressively warlike ones. Future versions of the game, of course, took the idea and ran with it.
• Colbert Bump: This series, particularly in the later installments, brought many obscure historical leaders into the limelight.
• Development Gag: The screen names of Beta testers appear as Great Spies (probably because there aren't many historical great spies whose names we actually know, because then they wouldn't be very good spies.)
• Dummied Out: In III, Austria is a fully complete civilization, with everything that other civs have. However, due to a hard-coded limit as to how many playable civilizations there can be in the game, the only way to play as Austria is to mess with the code and replace another civilization with them.
• Milestone Celebration: Civ VI was released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first game's release.
• No Export for You: The PlayStation port of Civ I is only available in Japan.
• One-Hit Wonder: Strange as it may seem to have actors in a Civilization game, there were some in Civilization II, playing the advisers who had their own screen, telling you how you were doing. A few of the actors had other minor roles here and there, but most didn't go on in an acting career. You can see them all on the IMDB here.
  • Ancient Advisers
  • Medieval Advisers
  • Modern Advisers
  • Advisers in a state of anarchy
• Promoted Fanboy: Jon Shafer became the lead designer of Civilization V at age 25, after growing up playing the first installments of the series.
• Reality Subtext: The more turns that pass, the fewer "years" pass between turns. This is meant to represent how social and technological changes accelerated throughout history, but it also hilariously mimics the fact that as the game grinds on, it takes longer and longer for just one turn to pass as the map gets overgrown with empires and armies.
• Science Marches On: In the Opening Narration 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, likely including around the time the first game was developed.
• Separated by a Common Language: The title of the game is the American English spelling for civilisation (Commonwealth English). But Commonwealth markets may alternatively view the game's title as Xtreme Kool Letterz (similar to Mortal Kombat) and thus justify leaving it with that spelling by Rule of Cool.
• Technology Marches On: The late-game units in previous Civilization games were largely influenced by the prevailing military doctrines of the time when they were released. This is perhaps best shown by the Battleship's role in any given version of the game, ranging from being an end game unit to decisively obsolete. ^note  From 1-3 it was the ultimate naval unit capable of laying waste to anything on the sea, easily capable of crushing its contemporaries in the AEGIS Cruiser and Destroyer. In IV, it had as much strength as the Missile Cruiser and was cheaper and available earlier, making it more desirable unless you wanted to play with missiles; it still crushed destroyers (and Stealth Destroyers) like tin-cans. By V, it began as flat-out better then the Destroyer and capable of remaining relevant for the rest of the game by being able to conduct indirect fire, something which the higher-strength Missile Cruiser lacked. Come Gods and Kings, the Destroyer was buffed to have the same amount of melee strength as the battleship, but was still unlikely to take one out one-on-one. VI ultimately decided to weaken the Battleship's melee strength to that of an Ironclad, making it a squishy wizard compared to the Destroyer and finally entirely outclassed by the Missile Cruiser, reflecting the fact that Battleships themselves are obsolete in the 21st century. The irony being that the majority of VI's information-age units were contemporaries of the battleship age.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: A highly popular fan rumor claims that Gandhi's AI was subject to an overflow glitch in the original Civilization, where his Aggressiveness rating accidentally spikes from the lowest possible level to the highest once the player progresses far enough for the rest of the world to become more peaceful by two points. The rumor's first documented appearance was on this very wiki, where a user added a mention of it in 2012 without providing any proof, and it snowballed from there throughout the rest of The New '10s, resulting in Sid Meier himself having to refute it multiple times. The game has a hard cap for aggression that prevents aggression from going below 1, and Gandhi's tendency to unlock nuclear weaponry earlier than other nations is just a side effect of his nation having a focus on technological development. Every civ would get stupidly aggressive in the late game to keep the player from winning too easily — people just noticed it more with Gandhi because of how it meshed with his real-world reputation. Despite this, it became a popular enough meme to gain its own Wikipedia article, and both Civilization V and Civilization VI would include references to it as Easter eggs.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Firaxis was originally planning on including the Pueblo as a playable civilization in Brave New World, and had picked out a unique unit, a unique tile improvement, and a leader in the form of Popé. However, when it came time to find a Pueblo-speaking voice actor to portray the leader, they ran into stiff opposition from the Pueblo Council, who took offense at the idea of one of their cultural heroes being portrayed in the game. (Pueblo culture has strong taboos concerning photography and other visual representations of people, feeling that improper displays disturb the spirit world.) The Pueblo were eventually switched out for the Shoshone as a result.
  • The Spanish and Arab civilizations were originally planned to be included with the first game but ended up being cut for unknown reasons. Both were included in later games, however.

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