Civ IV Analysis - Make sure I'm not full of crap

[RiotGearEpsilon]

So, I'm taking Video Game Theory at college this semester and for my term paper I'm writing an indepth analysis of Civilization IV.

One of my thesis's is that Civ IV produces a regular 'narrative structure' that rises not from any of the game fiction but from the raw rules of the game, in the sense that there's a definite 'early game', 'mid game', and 'late game' that have distinctly different tones:

In the early game, you expand to the limit of your available space.

In the mid game, you've reached the limit of your expansion, and improve within the space you have.

In the late game, you've reached the point that you need to begin moving to consume additional resources that were previously under the control of other players.

Is this a reasonable summary?

Second question:

One of the thesis I'm working on is that players are, to everyone but themselves, not another player but another part of the game. After all, consider the A.I. players. We've all exchanged strategies on how best to defeat them, on how to predict them - but we don't consider them our peers. When we play an opponent we're accustomed to, we develop our own strategies to adapt to their habits.

Does this seem a reasonable line of thought?

Third question:

Sid Meier defined a game as 'a series of interesting choices'. In Civ IV, what are the major interesting choices you have to make? I don't mean over-all decisions, in terms of the total game strategy - those are a product of the little decisions you have to make, or rather, the overall strategy dictates how you'll respond to the various interesting

• What do I specialize this city in, if anything?
• When and where do I build my next city?
• Should I declare war now, ten turns from now, or maintain an unsteady peace?
• Should I research this tech or trade for it?
• Do I cut down this forest now or take advantage of the hammer production?

That sort of thing.

 

[Elandal]

A problem with defining early / mid / late game on those terms is that it's based only on expansion and warring, which are quite different to different players. Some go to war very early, some avoid war the whole game. And if the only iron I can find is under some heathen culture, then it's quite certain that I'll want to liberate the resource while still considering the game to be in early stages.

For me, "early game" is indeed the early expansion, but "mid-game" is more likely to be the warring period with "late game" starting when I first start thinking about the victory conditions: conquest, domination, diplomacy, or space? Then there's the "final stage" when I'm going for exactly one victory condition and direct all effort towards that, other possibilities no longer relevant. If I go the warring route (can lead to any of the above victories still) I might be at war for over a thousand years (maybe from roughly 0AD until maybe 1700-1800) without breaks, while still building infrastructure all the time. And if my chosen victory condition is militant, then the "final" stage is still a warring one. I have played a game where I had total of 30 turns of peace since the moment I had three axes on the border of nearest opponent..

 

[RiotGearEpsilon]

So a more reasonable progression would be:
1) Expansion
2) Conflict
3) Focus on a single victory condition
4) Commit to a single victory condition

How's that look?

 

[Sisiutil]

So a more reasonable progression would be:
1) Expansion
2) Conflict
3) Focus on a single victory condition
4) Commit to a single victory condition

How's that look?

"2) Conflict" strikes me as something of an over-simplification to describe the Civ IV mid-game, just as your earlier description ("you've reached the limit of your expansion, and improve within the space you have") was.

After the initial expansion, this is when the game is rich with possibilities, and many Civ players will tell you it's their favourite part of the game. There is conflict, of course, both with the rival civs you've met by now and with the various competing goals you have for your civilization. But the conflict can take many shapes and forms--war, perhaps, but not necessarily (which belies your first description--if I'm warring, I obviously don't feel I've "you've reached the limit of my expansion", and I'm not content to just "improve the space I have"!)

Other options besides, or in addition to, war: You could leverage religion for a diplomatic advantage. You could build up culture in order to claim more territory, even cities. If you claimed just enough land, you could withdraw and pursue a cultural victory, especially if exploration revealed that you have the advantage of being on an isolated continent. Or you could combine some or several of these approaches.

It's hard to encapsulate such a rich and varied experience in each game down to a phrase, or just a word. As Sid said and you quoted, the game is about choices, and you have a lot of them to make at that point in the game. "Conflict" in its broadest sense can encapsulate the experience, but it connotes something very specific--war--which is not the only option in the game at that point. (Though on the other hand, several people around here are complaining that since the expansion pack and its patch, war has become over-emphasized as a means to pursue or even ensure victory in the game.)

Your second question seems a little fuzzy to me. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make there. Perhaps you could explain it a little further?

As for your third question--wow, if you want a list of all the little choices a Civ player makes, that would be an awfully long list! But I'll throw in a few that I face in every game:

• Should I build a certain wonder, or something else?
• What Great Person do I want/need next, and how am I going to ensure I get him?
• What should I adopt as my State Religion, and when?
• When should I change civics, and to what?
• My cities are reaching their health/happiness limit--how should I deal with that?
• How will I attain a specific bonus within the game (free great person or founding a religion for being first to a certain tech, circumnavigation bonus, free tech from Liberalism)? Is it worth pursuing?
• I failed to accomplish a goal that was important to my strategy (complete a wonder, attain a game bonus, capture specific territory from an opponent). How will I compensate for that?

Sounds like an interesting project. Please keep us informed as to its progress!

 

[RiotGearEpsilon]

I certainly shall keep you informed. I'm just heading to bed, or I'd share it now, but in the morn I'll pass around the previous essay I wrote on Civ IV, which was no doubt rife with errors but was a satisfying production from my perspective.

Thanks for your feedback as well - it's excellent.

 

[siggboy]

I wish they would have assigned me theses as interesting as yours during my university course. *Sigh*. .

Good luck with your paper, make sure to post it here!

--Sigi

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I feel a multiplayer game is a more accurate depiction of the game theory aspect of Civ4. And from my experiences, once you get axeman, the Nash equlibrium for hammer usage is almost always "build axeman". That's why war wariness, maintenance cost and city defense in this game is necessay to make the "build infrastructure" option the right choice for at least some of the time. Although historically, defending an empire was harder than attacking, because by the time news gets to the palace, large numbers of villages would have been plundered, along with the adults that could have fought the invaders had they gathered in time.

 

[DaveMcW]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X

 

[futurehermit]

^^^hey, that's a very interesting wikipedia entry. thks davemcw!

p.s., good luck on the project, i think you've got solid feedback so far.

 

[Elandal]

Indeed early and mid games are my favourites. I often quit the game and start another when I see that the most interesting (IMHO) part of the game is over, and what I have left is going for the win (or loss - there's no shame to losing space race to Mansa by 2 turns, at least not in my books).

The reason for me is probably that the further you're in the game, the less interesting choices there are left. In the early game, everything is interesting.

Should I move my initial scouting warrior/scout along the river by which my capitol is located, or should I go to some other direction? Which direction on the river? Scout the coastline or inland? Or go for the normal "spiral pattern" of scouting? If (when) I meet other civs, should I try to explore to their direction, finding their cities, or should I rather explore away from them, hoping to find more tribal villages? Should I explore the tundra (which often has some valuable resources) or leave exploring that for later, concentrating on the more fertile regions for now?

As seen from the above, in the start even moving your only unit is interesting every turn. Any direction you go could be fun. Even running from the bear (eek! it's following me!) is for me more fun than moving a stack of tanks or optimizing space ship part production.

In the early game, choice of builds in your first cities, choosing locations for 2nd and 3rd (I usually go for 3 cities in the first expansion wave before considering any infrastructure or wonders in capitol) makes a big difference. In the midgame you have very limited choices left for settling, and in the late game you don't have space to settle, except if you make that space by razing cities. Even if you don't seem to have many choices as you first build in the capitol, that choice is a big one (settler first? worker first? warrior first? And what should be the second build?).

Again, in the early game the whole techtree is there, just waiting for me to choose which way I want to go. Still in midgame I have strategic choices left (in general, choose to beeline one branch in the tree). In late game, the choices are defined by how I choose to pursue victory, with almost no choices outside that.

I agree with a lot of what Sisiutil said. Midgame is rich with choices. This is when you have some cities, have met some civs, have diplomatic options to think about, maybe some expansion choices, you can choose to go to war or not (although some leaders may force your hand there - it's very hard to keep two religious leaders happy at the same time), and you still have many research choices.

One thing that shapes the game a lot is choice of map. On single landmass maps you get to meet all the civilizations fairly early. Continents is my "default" map choice, meaning that a separate group of civilizations exists and have developed some diplomatic relations already before I meet them. Archipelago (with my favourite variation there being tiny islands) means a lot of exploration and very different shape of an empire.

Another thing that shapes a lot is the leader and civ you play with - whether randomly assigned or chosen. Is your era of power going to be early or late (unique units and buildings)? The leader traits may drive you to one direction (an aggressive leader lends towards war, although that's not necessary).

I guess it comes down to eras:
1) the first era being one where you don't know anything or anyone: you can only explore and expand,
2) on second era you have met at least some civilizations (isolated starts apart) and many of your choices relate to how to deal with them (to align with some, to war with all, or to isolate yourself from the politics and expand within the unclaimed space)
3) on third era your choices regarding other civs have shaped the way, and you choose to pursue some large goals (victory conditions)
4) and on the fourth era, you drive your whole empire towards that single target, whether it's a space ship, building UN and fine tuning the diplomatic relations between the civs, or simply taking out anything and everything that stands in your way.

The important thing for me is that the number of choices you have left goes down during the game. At some point, I can either quit and start a new one, or continue on the chosen path only managing an empire, not having any real choices left to make.


When you've played several games (how many depends on the person) and reached some difficulty level (again, depends on person - Prince is comfortable for me) you can also play different kinds of games. I can choose map, civ, and leader, having decided what kind of a game I want to play (then maybe reroll the start until I get the start that lends towards the game I wanted), setting variant rules that I freely choose to abide by myself. Or of course you can continue finetuning your strategies and tactics, trying to reach the next difficulty level again

 

[Fetch]

I would clairify that 'conflict' doesn't necessarily mean war. It could be racing to get a circumnav. bonus, or settling on a new island, or edging in on two good buddies to break them up by spamming missionaries.

 

[Syndrome Zed]

So, I'm taking Video Game Theory at college this semester and for my term paper I'm writing an indepth analysis of Civilization IV.

One of my thesis's is that Civ IV produces a regular 'narrative structure' that rises not from any of the game fiction but from the raw rules of the game, in the sense that there's a definite 'early game', 'mid game', and 'late game' that have distinctly different tones:

In the early game, you expand to the limit of your available space.

In the mid game, you've reached the limit of your expansion, and improve within the space you have.

In the late game, you've reached the point that you need to begin moving to consume additional resources that were previously under the control of other players.

Is this a reasonable summary?

The way maintenance is done these days, I wouldn't recommend expanding to the limit of your available space except for high difficulty levels, where you won't have much space "available" to expand into. If you try expanding too fast now, without building up your 2 or 3 core cities first, you can easily crush your early economy under the weight of maintenance and pretty much tank your game from the beginning. Just ask the Julius Caesar lovers out there who use Praetorians to capture every city in sight, then can't figure out why they're suddenly running in the red even with 0% research or culture sliders.

Not to mention, for culture victories, you can usually avoid having to move to take over other peoples' territory.

 

[Carl v.]

The very concept of CIV has its roots deeply buried in the theories of the German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), displayed in his work “Decline of the West” (“Untergang des Abendlandes), first published 1918. Spengler was not a Nazi, even if someone interprets him as such.

According to Spengler, civilizations develop in different phases. The first is growth, utilizing new possibilities to survive (in gameplay we get new basic survival techniques as husbandry and irrigation).

When the civilization has enough surpluses, it starts to develop culture with great personalities doing great works or making scientific breakthroughs (gunpowder, printing press).

After the cultural phase comes the times of civilization when development slows down (“Decline of….&#8221, and then: Death of the civilization. The slowdown of development is mirrored in, as an example, the impact the tech flight has on humankind, compared to irrigation.

According to this, your initial suggestion seems ok.

If one plays any game with the same persons for some time, s/he will learn something about how her/his fellow players react in certain situations (Playing poker means a lot of quick calculations, but the main factor to win is psychological). I believe it is natural that the gamer adapts to her/his opponents, even if they are AIs. (..it is not the strongest of species that survive, but the one most adaptive to changes.)

The major, and most interesting, choices in CIV are always strategical. But they are not recognized all the time, because the gamer does not know s/he has taken a decision with an impact lasting the rest of the game.

I mean, gaming styles are very different. Some play on impulse and take their decisions on town/unit level. The civ develops as a number of coincidences and the big decisions are just a spin-off from the daily toil.

Others use a rigid logical framework prioritizing choices on strategical level and let all other choices follow as a consequence of the main goal.

I must admit I did not really get your third question, but still I think this might be the most challenging part. And to complicate matter further; what impact might the second question have on the third?

Seems like an interesting term paper, and I hope we get access to it when finished. Best wishes with your work.