I
have no idea where
we’d be without Sid
Meier’s Civilization.
Its influence has been
an overwhelming
constant for decades, defining
generations of strategy games and
developers. If Sid Meier and Bruce
Shelley hadn’t decided to let
Napoleon, Montezuma. and
Alexander the Great duke it out,
swallowing up the world and
dropping nukes on each other, a
huge chunk of gaming history
would never have happened.Turn-based strategy existed long
before Civ, but it’s Civ’s brand of
turn-based strategy that became the
model that most of the genre ended
up following. It’s not just 4X games
that owe almost everything to Civ.
You can’t help but stumble across its
DNA everywhere, whether you’re
playing Crusader Kings, Total War, or
Age of Empires, which dreamed of
being a real-time Civ.
It just kept setting the standard,
over and over, with each new release.
Wherever you are in the gaming
timeline, there’s a good Civ to play.
Throughout almost my entire life,
Civ’s been there, beckoning me to
take one more turn. And it’s always
recognisable. You always know what
you’re getting with Civ. That doesn’t
mean it’s immune to changes, andeach team has left their own mark on
the series, but it always maintains
that comforting familiarity.
Meier’s name is still in the title
and he continues to oversee the
series to this day, which is why it can
be hard to separate the individual
games from Civ’s long history. But it’s
not just Meier’s legacy. Every single
Civ has its own designer, and the
team has changed over the years.
Huge shifts have occurred due to
their vision. And then each new
designer builds on it, so that they’re
adding to this collaboration that’s
been going on for longer than a lot of
its players have been alive.TIME PORTAL
When you’re playing Civ VI, you’re
also playing every Civ that came
before it, and through all the changes
that original design philosophy is still
apparent. A focus on exploration and
discovery has been with the series
from the start, highlighting the
achievements of humanity and not
just the conflicts, and letting you win
the game not just through conquest
but by leaving Earth and travelling to
the stars. It’s ultimately an optimistic
series, and that optimism proved to
be infectious. Even Total War, a series
all about huge armies colliding, lets
you go down the diplomatic route,
conquering the world by making
massive alliances.THE GREATEST
INFLUENCER
PC gaming would look very different without
CIVILIZATION. By Fraser Brown
CIVILIZATIONA BRIEF HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION 30 years of wonders and wars
Civ might seem conservative 30 years on, but in 1991 it
seemed wildly ambitious. Meier and Shelley’s previous
game was Railroad Tycoon, and the leap from managing a
railroad company to being the immortal ruler of a global
empire was pretty big. “We were young, and we had no
fear,” Meier told me in an interview a few years ago. It
was an experiment. Things like using squares instead of
hexes and making it turn-based instead of real-time
weren’t made right away, instead being born out of a
desire to make this complex game more accessible.
Would I recommend the first game now? Maybe if you
want a trip back through gaming’s past. But you could
instead play the much flashier Civ VI. Or, if you prefer
squares over hexes, you can’t go
wrong with some Civ IV. And you’ll
still see what Meier, Shelley and
Microprose were trying to create in- Other developers are still trying
to find their own Civs, like Mohawk
Games’ Old World and Amplitude’s
Humankind. At this point, the only
way Civ will vanish is if actual human
civilisation perishes.
BELOW: Maps were
a bit simpler back
in 1991.
BOTTOM: Your
majesty, please don’t
nuke us.PC GAMING LEGENDS
CIVILIZATION
1991
The one that started
it all.CIVILIZATION II
1996
The one with the
animated emissaries.CIVILIZATION III
2001
The cultured
one.CIVILIZATION IV
2005
Civilization: The Next
Generation.CIVILIZATION V
2010
The rebel that
introduced hexes.CIVILIZATION VI
2016
The one that made
cities huge.