Are people who play civ smart, or am I an elitist?

Primadog said:

No. You're just looking for an in-group on which to call your own. Playing a game, listening to music, wearing a brand should not automatically define who you are nor provide you any sense of superiority.

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Quoted for Truth.

I've played Civ for years and years, and I don't feel smart.

I definitely don't feel smart when a barbarian steals my worker...

Time. Some people have it. Others don't. Civ games and other like it are notorious time hogs. Candy Crush shouldn't be. Now, I don't play that garbage, but I see enough people that do, and the amount of time they dump into it and the amount of money, I'd recommend they go to a more traditional gaming route. It's actually cheaper.

None of my friends play civ. I really recommend it, but they like games such as Minecraft and Call of Duty. Some of them also like TF2. One of them likes it, and is considering getting Civ V

Now, playing civ doesn't make you smart. But it takes a certain interest that not everybody has. Civ isn't a game like CoD that is mostly shooting and killing. Civ is a game that revolves around strategy. Not many people like strategy games(not only Civ, but also games like Europa Universalis). They don't want to plan and use their mind. They prefer simpler games that don't take this much thinking. I'm not saying that's wrong.

I also play simpler games like FIFA and sometimes Call of Duty. But I also enjoy a good strategy game which makes me use my brain.

Also, I have noticed that people that aren't that smart don't really appreciate games like Civ and EU4. They don't like it.

4N4C0ND4 said:

I would assume that if you add a poll on what type of job the average civfnatic player is doing, you will get a hight rate of high paid/high quality jobs compared to any popular phone game.

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Sure? I don't want to know how many people lose their high paid/high quality jobs because they constantly fall asleep after looooooooooooong nights of intense CIVing...

Of course we are.

Of course you are.

I look at it more like a grown up, mature game. And sure, The avarege civ-player is probably smarter then FIFA-player.

Everybody who like sport is not an idiot but all idiots like sport.





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Playing civ doesn't reflect anything. However you can gauge someone's intelligence by their posts on civfanatics

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Zaimejs said:

This is just a thought. But I have a hard time not looking down on people who play mindless games like Candy Crush and such... does that make me a bad person? I just seems like you have to be kind of smart to play Civ V well... I think a lot of the kids I teach would just be bored playing... they just wouldn't get it. Maybe I don't give people enough credit.

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I'd just like to say that yes, you are allowed to look down on people who play Candy Crush, because they support King, and King should be eradicated for the they've been pulling.

But that only goes for Candy Crush specifically, not for non-King made games.

I would say that the Civilization series tends to appeal more to the intellectually minded than your average video game. This is because it requires a descent attention span and the ability to plan ahead, think and reason. Many other games appeal to anyone and everyone and so get a broader audience of interested players.

I would say that Civ also tends to attract an older, more mature player base which in turn is of course a bit smarter and wiser than the horde of 12 year old kids with ADD flooding FPS games.

I think it's safe to say that people who play CIV, Total War, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings etc. in a 'hardcore' way, generally know more about history than dem normal folkz.

I don't think a truly smart person will evaluate one's intellectual capacity simply by the one's game of choice. No offense.

Games can show a person's mindset and personality, but not IQ. Dig a little deeper and you'll figure out that some people with "high paid/high quality jobs" simply don't have time for such time-consuming games like Civ, and they may actually turn for Candy Crush, because it's casual, addictive yet shows more mercy to your free time (at least until you start dumping money into it).

What matters is the way a person plays a certain game. You can have 800hrs of Civ5 behind and yet still follow the same strategy for every civ in every single game, because "it's written so in the guide". Meanwhile someone can play a shooter and crush the opponents not because he goes full Rambo, but because he has an amazing sense of environment and uses the map to his advantage. So who is smarter in this case?

Lol, and I thought my similar thoughts about me and my friends and people not interested in science/philosophy/history are silly and arrogant

and I was afraid of my own potential arrogance because I have, uhm, unusual IQ scores

and I had pangs of conscience because of my dangerous tendencies towards contempt

and here I found people who find civilization game series elitist, ambitious, noble and intelligent


Calm down guys, spare negative emotions for truly bad people, not fans of Fruit Ninja (Btw, Fruit Ninja is awesome )

Sagax said:

What matters is the way a person plays a certain game. You can have 800hrs of Civ5 behind and yet still follow the same strategy for every civ in every single game, because "it's written so in the guide". Meanwhile someone can play a shooter and crush the opponents not because he goes full Rambo, but because he has an amazing sense of environment and uses the map to his advantage. So who is smarter in this case?

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I'd say that in Civ, you have to adapt to your environment more than you would have to do in a shooter. In most shooters I can name, at least the popular ones, it's a matter of finding the best place to camp by trial and error. In Civ, or indeed most strategy games... they're called strategy for a reason. You have to adapt to your situation far more than you'd have to do in a shooter, as one mistake can mean the game in some situations; but in CoD or Halo, you just respawn and think nothing of it.

I'm also massively biased against first-person shooters. So yeah, I'd say that a lot more thinking is involved in Civ games, but that doesn't make you intelligent, as the term is so vague.

If by smart you mean intelligence, no.

Gamblers are highly intelligent people. They get hooked into the game and because it's such a thinking man's game they convince themselves they're better than everyone, that their losses don't exist, and that everything they do is strategic and sound. They only ever talk about their wins, they can never talk about their losses.

These same people get fooled into nickle and dime energy based games. They'll spend tonnes of money on them and despite actually having very high IQs they'll sink money into a system that is designed to work against them.

There's only one conclusive study on the relation of types of video games and intelligence. They took a few genres and found intelligence in this order:

(1) Puzzle
(2) Real Time Strategy
(3) Simulation
(4) Shooter
(5) RPG

Generally speaking people with higher intelligence do not play games that are slow and methodical, that require a lot of thought. Highly intelligent people are really good at games that are fast paced and require pinpoint fast actions. Yes, chances are a person who has the world high score on Bejeweled has a higher IQ than you.

I'd like to think that people who play Civ are, at the very least, more knowledgeable in world history than the general population, if nothing else.

But even that doesn't seem to be true in the case of those "elite" players and min-maxers who look down on what they call "roleplayers", those people who apparently only play a game like Civ in order to get the fastest victory possible on Deity.

I just read a Hyper article from this year about strategy games. It mentions statistics showing that strategy games improve intelligence, with each sub-genre of strategy achieving that in different ways.

RTS: improves reflexes, some logic - crucial for knowing how to counter AI/player in real time. One motto from starcraft is "delay is death", according to Hyper magazine.
TB: improves analytical, long term planning and logistics skills. Obviously, in TB, you have plenty of time to arrange things, so it's all about categorized which things are most important and acting accordingly.

Although this isn't mentioned in the article, I would argue that it improves a bit of memory because you have remember the rock-paper-scissors mechanism in strategy games rather well, as well as other details.

So I'm not surprised with OP's thoughts. Just don't be too arrogant, which as stated earlier is effectively what Sid Meier meant by categorizing civ fans as ego-maniacs. I still think that was harsh though. But then again, he'd probably categorize action and shooter gamers as dumb/boring, puzzle gamers probably also as arrogant, adventure/RPG gamers as somewhat lifeless, assuming that RPG games like WoW are more addictive than civ, considering that WoW in the context of civ is like playing an endless civ game online, or marathon MP civ.

actually the question is: how many <offending word snipped> play civ?

Moderator Action: This is a stunningly inappropriate word to use on this site. Do not do use it again, and do not try to avoid the autocensor by spelling it different ways.
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Is that really , the actual question?

Not smarter, no. Like thinking more? Probably.