Arkaeyn
King
Did you miss Part One? It's here.
Part Two is here.
You should probably read part one if you're going to say "But it's just a game!"
The final major aspect in which Civilization is historiographically conservative is in its portrayal of its human history as the interaction of separate nation-states. All of the civilizations in the games play similarly, and all are under complete control of the player. This can lead to obvious absurdities the first two Greek cities are Athens and Sparta and has the effect of negating internal conflicts in a civilization. To carry on the Greek example, much of what is referred to as Greek culture in history is really Athenian culture, and Sparta is always held up as diametrically opposed to Athens. The extraordinarily important internal-driven change in Civilization is so abstracted as to be nothing more than an occasional annoyance. The French Revolution and the American Civil War would, in Civilization, be modeled as exactly equivalent player-induced changes in government.
On the other hand, interactions between the nation-states is held up as critically important. Wars, technological exchanges, border clashes, and the like all occur and demand great amounts of player attention. Modeling the American Civil War would take only a few clicks to, say, switch the government from Republic to Democracy, while the Spanish-American War would be modeled in excruciating detail, from loading the troops onto the ships to having to entertain the Philippinos to prevent them from rebelling. This conforms to the conservative historical view that human history is little more than the creation of empires or nation-states and their struggles with one another, a viewpoint which every year manages to bore more and more high school students forced to remember the dates 1066, 1492, 1588, and 1914 (the conquest of England, opening of America by Columbus, failure of the Spanish Armada, and the start of World War One). This pushes Civilization firmly into the category of political and military history, while ignoring the extremely vibrant fields of social and intellectual history. The nation-based concept of civilizations is also based around European experience**, which manifests itself in Civilizations lone choice for a sub-Saharan African civilization, the Zulu, whose primary claim to fame was their banding together, European-style, in order to conflict with the European British. (Ironically, given its title, Rise of Nations is more fair to Africa, with its Bantu and Nubians being far worthier claimants to the concept of a civilization.)
**The argument that Civilization is Eurocentric is another form in which it is historiographically conservative, however, it seems so obvious that I have not yet written a demonstration of it.
For any epic strategy 4X*** game to move away from this model would require a complete change in thinking, moving towards a macromanagement model. That is, the players abilities to influence the game world are more limited, and as the civilization expands, the player has less control over the farther regions, creating true border zones and the potential for places within the civilization act on their own and drive internal change. Master of Orion III was originally designed to do something like this, but the designers panicked at the ambition, and instead opted for the complete crap style of gameplay. That disaster will almost certainly frighten away designers trying to create to this more historical, potentially more fun model of strategic gameplay.
*** eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate the general category in which most strategy games fall, with Civilization as the Platonic ideal of the genre.
Part Two is here.
You should probably read part one if you're going to say "But it's just a game!"
The final major aspect in which Civilization is historiographically conservative is in its portrayal of its human history as the interaction of separate nation-states. All of the civilizations in the games play similarly, and all are under complete control of the player. This can lead to obvious absurdities the first two Greek cities are Athens and Sparta and has the effect of negating internal conflicts in a civilization. To carry on the Greek example, much of what is referred to as Greek culture in history is really Athenian culture, and Sparta is always held up as diametrically opposed to Athens. The extraordinarily important internal-driven change in Civilization is so abstracted as to be nothing more than an occasional annoyance. The French Revolution and the American Civil War would, in Civilization, be modeled as exactly equivalent player-induced changes in government.
On the other hand, interactions between the nation-states is held up as critically important. Wars, technological exchanges, border clashes, and the like all occur and demand great amounts of player attention. Modeling the American Civil War would take only a few clicks to, say, switch the government from Republic to Democracy, while the Spanish-American War would be modeled in excruciating detail, from loading the troops onto the ships to having to entertain the Philippinos to prevent them from rebelling. This conforms to the conservative historical view that human history is little more than the creation of empires or nation-states and their struggles with one another, a viewpoint which every year manages to bore more and more high school students forced to remember the dates 1066, 1492, 1588, and 1914 (the conquest of England, opening of America by Columbus, failure of the Spanish Armada, and the start of World War One). This pushes Civilization firmly into the category of political and military history, while ignoring the extremely vibrant fields of social and intellectual history. The nation-based concept of civilizations is also based around European experience**, which manifests itself in Civilizations lone choice for a sub-Saharan African civilization, the Zulu, whose primary claim to fame was their banding together, European-style, in order to conflict with the European British. (Ironically, given its title, Rise of Nations is more fair to Africa, with its Bantu and Nubians being far worthier claimants to the concept of a civilization.)
**The argument that Civilization is Eurocentric is another form in which it is historiographically conservative, however, it seems so obvious that I have not yet written a demonstration of it.
For any epic strategy 4X*** game to move away from this model would require a complete change in thinking, moving towards a macromanagement model. That is, the players abilities to influence the game world are more limited, and as the civilization expands, the player has less control over the farther regions, creating true border zones and the potential for places within the civilization act on their own and drive internal change. Master of Orion III was originally designed to do something like this, but the designers panicked at the ambition, and instead opted for the complete crap style of gameplay. That disaster will almost certainly frighten away designers trying to create to this more historical, potentially more fun model of strategic gameplay.
*** eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate the general category in which most strategy games fall, with Civilization as the Platonic ideal of the genre.
