Civilization
1991 · Strategy · PC/DOS
Overview
Sid Meier's Civilization put players in command of a civilisation from 4000 BC through the space age, making decisions about city building, research, diplomacy, and war. The game's turn-based structure and historical scope created a 'one more turn' engagement that players reported losing entire nights to. It defined the 4X strategy genre: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate.
Deep Dive
Civilization was designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley at MicroProse. The game synthesised board game mechanics with computer-managed complexity — hundreds of variables tracking each civilisation's development simultaneously. The technology tree — a branching research path from the wheel through nuclear fission — communicated historical progression while creating strategic choices about which technological paths to prioritise.
Developer Story
Civilization was designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley at MicroProse. Meier had previously designed Covert Action, which he felt had failed commercially; Civilization was his attempt to build a historical strategy game with broader appeal. The game launched in September 1991.
Did You Know?
- Sid Meier has described Civilization as a game that 'simulates the history of the world' — a description he was initially reluctant to make for fear of overstating its accuracy.
- The AI Gandhi became infamous for a programming bug: his aggression value started at the minimum, and democratic government reduced it further, causing an integer underflow that set it to the maximum — making Gandhi extremely aggressive with nuclear weapons.
- Civilization was inspired partly by Francis Tresham's board game Civilisation, though the computer game expanded far beyond the board game's scope.
- The 'one more turn' phenomenon — players intending to stop playing but continuing indefinitely — was documented in player reports from Civilization's first release and became a standard description of the genre's engagement mechanism.
