Only a question of words, but

[KarstenL]

It’s of course only a question about words but since I started playing ”Civilization” 4-5 months ago I have been irritated by the silly expressions: history will remember you as worthless, pathetic or foolish.

My first plays were of course complete disasters, and I could very well understand that I was characterised as “Hammurabi the worthless” when I early in the game lost all my cities!

But as I finally succeeded in surviving till 2050 with a small civilization it surprised me a lot to see that I still was worthless, pathetic or foolish.

I might have made many mistakes, and probably still do. I’m a beginner, and my best result until now is to be number 2 at warlord level characterised as “Hammurabi the terrible”.

But I now realise that the basic “mistake” doesn’t lie in bad technology research/trade, wrong city or land improvements, bad city locations etc.

The mistake is simply that my civilization isn’t big! But, excuse me, what’s wrong by being small? I live myself in a small country, namely Denmark. Of course we don’t play the same role in the world as for instance USA, but it doesn’t mean that our country is worthless! On the other hand if we tried to be bigger by declaring war on Germany we certainly would deserve to be called foolish by the rest of the world!

Civilization is of course a simplification of the “real world”, but should after all reflect real world development, which the game also does in many ways. But the world consists of both small and big countries, and the former are not necessarily the worst.

So my suggestion is that “Civilization” should give some acknowledgments to small but well functioning countries, and then leave such characterisations as “worthless”, “pathetic” or “foolish” to very bad performances.

In fact I have a concrete idea: Assume you succeed in at least building cities enough to complete Forbidden Palace, and at least complete one big wonder: If so you should be characterised as “the fine little king”.

If you do somewhat better than that, for instance 3 more cities and one more big wonder, you could be characterised as “the tiny emperor” etc.

This would of course not change the game at all, but it would give some encouragement to the beginners, who might feel sad after a good game where many things went well, still to be called “worthless”, “pathetic” or “foolish”.

 

[Turner]

All 'worthless, pathetic, and foolish' refer to is your score. The higher your score, the better the word, so to speak.

As you play more games at a higher level, your score will go up more.

 

[Shirastro]

Yup, and how big is your empiere isn't the only thing that counts, happy people are important too, so you can achieve a good score with a rather small contry if you keap them happy........like this

 

[AdHHH]

It’s of course only a question about words but since I started playing ”Civilization” 4-5 months ago I have been irritated by the silly expressions: history will remember you as worthless, pathetic or foolish.

In fact I have a concrete idea: Assume you succeed in at least building cities enough to complete Forbidden Palace, and at least complete one big wonder: If so you should be characterised as “the fine little king”.
This would of course not change the game at all, but it would give some encouragement to the beginners, who might feel sad after a good game where many things went well, still to be called “worthless”, “pathetic” or “foolish”.

It's all about the score; if you only want a small Civ, then try for a 100k cultural victory or a 20k city. 1 city challenge and 5 city challenges are very popular in CFC, maybe you should try that...

[Edit]: Welcome to CFC

 

[Jason Fliegel]

You should also be aware that score is based on what level you are playing at. The higher the level, the bigger your score will be, even if you are doing everything else the same. So as you learn the game and move up to higher levels, you will get higher scores. Even the best player can't get too high a score on the easiest levels because of this.