Posidonius
Civherder
Has it been that long? Our baby grew up in the days when every baud was important, disks were actually floppy, and VGA was something you'd have a friend over to admire. And what a strapping lad it was, not only spawning a slew of successors on the way to become a true gaming franchise, but now among the rarest of games, the gems which are still pleasantly playable a generation later.
The secret in the sauce is the same with all of them: beguiling simplicity at the start, a limited number of pieces, with the complexity rising as the number of moving parts increases, but gently not exponentially. A game of chess is dumbly simple when it starts, half the board occupied and half empty, and only Knights and Pawns can move. 16 pieces and you can never earn more, but as more pieces go into motion, the complexity grows. Poker starts very simply, 20 cards in play and 9 possible hands. But add human personalities when betting starts, and the complexity ratchets up.
Civ I is a great game because it has a damper on complexity. Chess has a damper: the removal of pieces keeps the growth of complexity below exponential. All card games have a damper, the limitation of 4 suits and 13 ranks. Civ I has a damper built into its model of an economy. Large numbers of units or buildings might be possible in one scenario, but unsustainable later in the same game. Large population can be a blessing when the game takes one turn, but a curse later on. The way you pay for things in Civ I, the economy, is the way it keeps complexity in check. Units you launched before are now best disbanded, improvements built for an earlier strategy are now a useless and costly boondoggle, and cities you stormed last century are now so corrupt and bloated that they're better off busted down into a Settler.
At the heart of it, there's two layers of economic modeling. First, there's the choice between wheatstalks, tradearrows and shields. And on top of that layer, there are 2 ways to use wheatstalks, 3 ways to use tradearrows, and 3 ways to use shields. In the crafty way the economy was designed, goals can be achieved in multiple ways. Want a city to build a Wonder? You can maximize its food to grow and eat more shields, re-home its Settler and give it a garrison. Or, you can drop wheatstalks, add shields, and have nearby cities use shields to build Caravans to help. Or you can jump your tax rate, and buy the Wonder outright. Any goal has multiple paths.
The economy is the key to Civ I's lasting playability. Barracks in a city, good idea. Barracks in every city? Terrible albatross. The game makes you simplify one aspect in order to increase the complexity of another. And the spheres where you need to contract or expand your empire's complexity shift as the game goes on. Really a genius design.
Congratulations to Sid and Bruce, yes i've seen those names parade across the splash screen so many times that i feel we're on a first-name basis
The secret in the sauce is the same with all of them: beguiling simplicity at the start, a limited number of pieces, with the complexity rising as the number of moving parts increases, but gently not exponentially. A game of chess is dumbly simple when it starts, half the board occupied and half empty, and only Knights and Pawns can move. 16 pieces and you can never earn more, but as more pieces go into motion, the complexity grows. Poker starts very simply, 20 cards in play and 9 possible hands. But add human personalities when betting starts, and the complexity ratchets up.
Civ I is a great game because it has a damper on complexity. Chess has a damper: the removal of pieces keeps the growth of complexity below exponential. All card games have a damper, the limitation of 4 suits and 13 ranks. Civ I has a damper built into its model of an economy. Large numbers of units or buildings might be possible in one scenario, but unsustainable later in the same game. Large population can be a blessing when the game takes one turn, but a curse later on. The way you pay for things in Civ I, the economy, is the way it keeps complexity in check. Units you launched before are now best disbanded, improvements built for an earlier strategy are now a useless and costly boondoggle, and cities you stormed last century are now so corrupt and bloated that they're better off busted down into a Settler.
At the heart of it, there's two layers of economic modeling. First, there's the choice between wheatstalks, tradearrows and shields. And on top of that layer, there are 2 ways to use wheatstalks, 3 ways to use tradearrows, and 3 ways to use shields. In the crafty way the economy was designed, goals can be achieved in multiple ways. Want a city to build a Wonder? You can maximize its food to grow and eat more shields, re-home its Settler and give it a garrison. Or, you can drop wheatstalks, add shields, and have nearby cities use shields to build Caravans to help. Or you can jump your tax rate, and buy the Wonder outright. Any goal has multiple paths.
The economy is the key to Civ I's lasting playability. Barracks in a city, good idea. Barracks in every city? Terrible albatross. The game makes you simplify one aspect in order to increase the complexity of another. And the spheres where you need to contract or expand your empire's complexity shift as the game goes on. Really a genius design.
Congratulations to Sid and Bruce, yes i've seen those names parade across the splash screen so many times that i feel we're on a first-name basis
