Civilization (computer game)
| Civilization | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 | |||
| Studio | MicroProse | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1991 | ||
| platform | Amiga , Atari ST , MS-DOS , macOS , Mac OS Classic , SNES , Windows , N-Gage | ||
| genre | Global strategy game | ||
| Game mode | Single player , with CivNet multiplayer | ||
| control | Keyboard , mouse | ||
| system advantages preconditions |
PC-XT, 640 KB RAM , EGA - graphics card | ||
| medium | Floppy disk , CD-ROM , download | ||
| language | English , German | ||
| Age rating |
|
||
| information | In addition to the original hardware, emulators such as the UAE for the Amiga or DOSBox for Windows can be used. The MS-DOS version can also run under Windows. | ||
Civilization is a computer game released in 1991 by the US manufacturer MicroProse . In it, the player leads an entire human civilization over several millennia. He controls a wide variety of areas such as urban planning, economics, military and research. Civilization established the global strategy genre and is still considered one of the most influential games in the history of computer games .
The game offers the player decision-making options with different consequences. He can control individual units and thus advance the exploration, settlement and conquest of the game world. However, he can also make decisions at higher levels, for example by setting the tax rates or the form of government or by determining the current research focus. Furthermore, the player competes with his civilization against other civilizations controlled by the computer. With these he can enter into diplomatic relations which can end in alliances or lead to war.
Civilization was developed under the direction of Sid Meier , who has played several successful games such as Silent Service , Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon had published. Approximately 850,000 units of the game were sold. In addition to the great success in sales as well as with fans and critics, it is often classified as educationally valuable due to the presentation of historical connections. In 1995 a version with a multiplayer option called CivNet was also released . Several sequels followed later with a similar or modified scenario (see article Sid Meier's Civilization ).
Basic principles
Game preparation
In order to keep the course of the game variable to a certain extent, the size of the land masses and the nature of the game world can be set at the beginning. In the case of smaller continents , the probability is high that you are the only people on a certain continent and can thus initially develop undisturbed by potentially hostile other peoples. In the case of large continents, however, contact with other civilizations usually occurs earlier. Contact with other peoples can lead to the exchange of knowledge and cooperation , but it also harbors the risk of war. The nature of the game world affects the productivity of cities. A cold and dry planet is poor in resources, whereas a warm and humid planet is rich in resources.
Furthermore, the player can determine the number of competing civilizations and the level of difficulty. The higher the difficulty level, the harder enemy units are to beat, and the more adversaries are more research and propagation.
At the beginning the player also chooses one of the civilizations offered. These are based on real peoples, both currently existing, such as Germans, English or Americans, as well as historical civilizations such as the Aztecs . The choice of civilization can have an impact on the game, in particular when choosing the “Earth” map, the starting units (first settlers) are placed on the map in the area of the actual settlement areas of the civilization concerned.
Game flow
Civilization is a turn-based strategy game . During the course of the game, the player must move military and civil units and determine further production in the cities.
Units correspond to characters and are moved on a two-dimensional map . They can be used to clear up the card, which is initially completely unknown to the player. Sooner or later his units will meet units and cities of the competing civilizations. Military units can be used for attack or defense. Settlers serve to found further cities, to set up the surrounding area and to expand the transport infrastructure . Other units, such as diplomats or caravans , are used for espionage or the establishment of trade routes to strengthen the economy.
The player can produce further units or buildings in the cities. Buildings have different functions. For example, city walls are used for defense, libraries and universities to promote research, marketplaces and banks to increase tax revenue, factories to increase production capacity, granaries to increase population growth, and aqueducts to increase the population limit of cities.
The game begins with either one or sometimes randomly two settler units and the selection of a suitable location for the player's first settlement (s) in 4000 BC. However, the player does not have access to all types of units and buildings from the start. The player only has the choice between units and buildings that correspond to his level of research. The first units are primitive warriors and the first buildings are barracks. To get to more modern units and building types, the player must advance scientific research. As knowledge progresses, further unit and building types are activated. For example, the player must first invent the wheel in order to be able to build chariots , research bronze processing for the installation of phalanges or pottery for building granaries.
Game objective
The aim of the game is to outperform other civilizations through military strength or cultural or scientific advantage.
One possibility of victory is the annihilation of all opposing civilizations. The game can also be won by building a spaceship that successfully flies to Alpha Centauri . This assumes that the player relies on technical progress rather than military strength. Ultimately, the player can rely on a high overall rating, which the game awards when a certain game time is reached and the game is ended. Cultural achievements, such as building wonders of the world , can also play a role here.
Further game principles
Global influence
In addition to the basic principles described above, there are other control and setting options that influence each other. Basically, the player must control the following parameters:
The player can choose between several forms of government, which are only discovered in the course of the game through scientific research. The form of government affects the productivity of cities and the cost of maintaining the units. For example, the first form of government available, despotism , is less productive, while democracy is much more productive. Conversely, in a democracy it is more difficult to wage wars, as military units continuously incur costs and the population becomes dissatisfied as soon as units move out of the cities. Continuous dissatisfaction can lead to a revolution, making the form of government unsustainable and collapsing.
The player must have diplomatic relations with other civilizations. One can conclude peace treaties or declare war on opponents. Impending conflicts can be avoided through mutual tribute payments and the exchange or transfer of knowledge. The negotiations also include declarations of war against third parties.
The tax revenue can be kept by the state or given to science. The state can also forego part of the tax revenue in order to increase the satisfaction of the population. It should be noted that the tax revenue must be higher than the maintenance costs of the buildings, so that the player has to ensure a balanced state budget. As soon as he is unable to do this and the treasury has been used up, some buildings are given up and forcibly sold.
Pollution can cause global warming .
Cities
.jpg)
In addition to the global settings, the game offers the option of making fine adjustments to certain parameters in the cities .
Population growth, productivity, citizen satisfaction and contribution to science all depend on the buildings in the city as well as the resources in the area. Depending on the type of terrain and infrastructure, the surrounding area of a city contributes to population growth and productivity. The player can influence these factors by distributing the population to the environment, i.e. by determining the workplaces. In addition, the player can improve the use of resources by building roads, irrigation systems or other infrastructure measures.
However, more modern and more efficient buildings require maintenance costs and can therefore only be maintained in the long term if the population is correspondingly large.
World wonder
World wonders are also buildings in the game, but they can only be built once and only by one civilization. They are costly to manufacture and occupy a city's production for many turns. In addition to classic world wonders of antiquity, outstanding buildings from later times are also among the world wonders in the game.
In contrast to "normal" buildings, their influence is not limited to a city, but of a global nature. Since they can only be built once, they are of particular strategic importance. By building a wonder of the world, the player can secure an advantage that his opponents cannot achieve. However, in most cases the effect is limited in time.
Examples:
- The Great Wall of China causes all opponents to seek peace with the player. However, this effect ended with the invention of black powder .
- The Great Library means that the player receives every new scientific discovery as soon as two other civilizations have discovered it. Its effect ends with the invention of the university.
Educational aspect
The game also gives the players knowledge about the history of mankind. It offers a small encyclopedia called "Civilopedia", in which all units, buildings including wonders of the world and scientific inventions with their historical backgrounds are briefly explained. The "Civilopedia" thus contains an overview of the most important achievements of mankind. In addition, inventions and scientific advances are chronologically interdependent ( technology tree ), which the player must deal with if he wants to research specifically (see figure on the right).
In addition, the explanations in the "Civilopedia" aim to explain the effect of the objects described within the game. The effect of some objects corresponds to historical facts, while with other objects it is more "idealized" due to the need to map the effect in a game principle.
For example, the discovery of gunpowder and the beginning of automobile construction had decisive aftereffects. The black powder leads to the replacement of the military units by units equipped with firearms such as the musketeers . Automobile construction is replacing mounted units with motorized and armored units such as tanks . In both the game and the story, the Manhattan Project is a prerequisite for building nuclear weapons and the Apollo program is a prerequisite for building spaceships .
The introduction of democracy, on the other hand, leads to an increase in efficiency in every civilization in all areas (research, trade, production). This is a rather idealized representation of democracy. Similar to the Great Wall of China, the United Nations also ensures that other civilizations are always ready for a peace agreement. The United Nations cannot be used to start a war in the game.
Every civilization has a historically known person as its leader, whose behavior corresponds to that person's historical reputation. For example, Gandhi is more peaceful, Genghis Khan is more aggressive and Queen Elisabeth is more imperialistic .
Finally, when establishing settlements, the game suggests city names that are or were actually used by the respective civilization, for example Karakoram and Samarkand for Mongolian cities or Babylon for the first city of the Babylonians .
Scientific work
The Civilization series is also the subject of academic articles, mostly examining whether the games are suitable for use in the classroom and what messages are being conveyed. However, the articles refer to Civilization III rather than the first game in the series, as the third installment is the most successful game in the series, with at least two million units sold. In addition, in the opinion of some professors, the first two games were unsuitable for teaching because of the greater influence of warfare on the game (“Several professors said that Civilization I and II were too warfare-oriented to be useful in class, but that the diplomacy options have been ramped up in the third edition. "). The third and fourth games in the series were actually used in the classroom by some teachers and professors. This has also led Firaxis to set up a special page for teachers to address this target group directly. However, some statements about Civilization III can also be applied to the first game.
Margus Valdre states in his work that computer games have a great influence on the under 30s and can therefore influence their perception of reality. The problem is that the “gods” of the game or their rules are not subject to any control. The messages of the game are not contradicted. From the rules of the game it follows e.g. B. that you can start a war at any time as long as the population is satisfied (through tax cuts). Wars in the game are also an acceptable alternative for achieving growth.
Origins and Effects
The computer game Empire and the board game Civilization were given as sources influencing the development of the game in the trade press of that time . Empire is also a turn-based strategy game that is limited to the military aspect. In Empire , the units are also moved on a two-dimensional map and, as in Civilization , they are produced in the cities. The division of the units into attack strength, defense strength and movement rate is also the same. The basic idea of taking control of a civilization and determining its further development stems from the board game. In contrast to the board game, the military aspect plays a bigger role in Civilization .
Successor to Sid Meier and his companies
- See also the main article Sid Meier's Civilization with the description of the successors.
Since Civilization was the first game with the game idea described above, it is considered the genre founder. Under the direction of Sid Meier, three official successors have appeared who made minor changes to the game principle and adapted the game to modern computer technology. The games Alpha Centauri and Colonization were also created with Sid Meier's participation . Alpha Centauri takes place after Civilization and is about the settlement of a planet in the solar system of the same name . The game is more complex than Civilization as it gives the player more choices. So it is possible to model the planetary surface or to define some details of the units yourself. With Colonization a change of subject has been made: instead of the settlement of a planet it was about the colonization of America. Therefore, the plot spans from 1492 to 1850, and the gameplay focuses more on production and trade. From 1993 the series Master of Orion by Sid Meier's company MicroProse appeared, but was developed by the company Simtex . Instead of conquering a planet, this series is about conquering the galaxy .
Similar games
Other manufacturers have also developed global strategy games, following the ideas of Sid Meier and Civilization ; there are also open source projects that emulate his games.
The company Activision has published the two games Civilization: Call to Power (1999) and Call to Power II (2000), which also had the same gameplay as Civilization . With Galactic Civilizations (2003) and Galactic Civilizations II (2006) by the company Stardock , two games were released that were similar to Master of Orion and also played in space. Logic Factory had previously released a similar game called Ascendancy in 1996 .
With the first part of the Age of Empires series in 1997, Ensemble Studios took many elements of the Civilization series, such as research and wonders of the world, into the real-time strategy genre; The genres converged even further in 2003 in Rise of Nations .
Reviews and awards
Civilization has received above-average ratings from many game magazines due to the new game principle and the high level of complexity . However, the lack of a multiplayer option, the "annoying" and rather sparse music and the simple graphic representation for the time were given as deficiencies .
The Amiga Joker magazine (issue 9/1992) wrote with the final result 85% (whereby 100% would correspond to a perfect game): “Really great, only the presentation makes you feel more reminiscent of the (computer) Middle Ages. Music only sounds on the edge. FX are even rarer, and the almost animation-free, but fluidly scrolling graphics only really appeal to the intermediate images. There is no two-player mode, [...] So the technical design is nothing famous, but Civilization has a lot to offer in terms of complexity and gameplay. "
With a rating of 88% and the distinction “Highly Recommended”, PowerPlay magazine wrote : “Civilization is undoubtedly a lot of fun. […] Unfortunately, a few little things disturb the splendid life of the ruler. A two- or multiplayer mode is missing [...], and after a few hours the game becomes a bit confusing. "
Keith Ferrell writes in atarimagazines.com that the game has an educational value in addition to entertainment ("While the game is primarily intended as entertainment, it has an educational aspect that cannot be overlooked.") . In the game, however, the knowledge would not be conveyed through instruction, but through a set of rules that enable the player to gain experience through right and wrong decisions: "Meier isn't teaching here - nor, except in a couple of environmental areas, is he preaching. Rather, he provides players with a self-contained continuum to explore and lets the reasonable and realistic rules of that continuum do the teaching. You learn by experience what works and what doesn't. " .
In 1992, Civilization won the Origins Award for Best Military / Strategy Game of 1991. In November 1996, Civilization was named # 1 of the 150 Best Games of All Time by Computer Gaming World .
Web links
- Civilization series at MobyGames (English)
- Civilization Wiki
- Civ1 manual (English)
- Gamasutra.com: The History of Civilization (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Press release including sales of Civilization
- ↑ “Actually, I'm proud to say that the original Civilization game had global warming as one of the consequences of too much pollution,” Meier says.
- ↑ All Time Top 20 Best Selling Games and More ( Memento from February 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ www.Insidehighered.com David Epstein's "Not Just Child's Play"
- ↑ www.firaxis.com especially for teachers ( Memento from June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (offline)
- ↑ Margus Valdre: Dominance and Security in the Power Discourses: Sid Meier's Civilization as an Example of Discourses in power games. ( Memento of September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: www.ceeol.com.
- ↑ Critique of PowerPlay magazine (January 1992)
- ↑ Critique of the AmigaJoker magazine (August 1992)
- ↑ atarimagazines.com: Sid Meier's Civilization. by Keith Ferrell
- ↑ Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design: List of the winners of the Origins Awards 1991 ( English ) In: Official website of the fair . Archived from the original on June 4, 2009. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ↑ List of the 150 best games from Computer Gaming World ( Memento from August 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
