The Happy Phalanx

Admittedly, the graphics were quite simple by today’s standards, but for me, and many others, that didn’t matter. The biggest issue was “Just one more turn” syndrome. Ask anyone familiar with the series and they will tell you tales of hours, even days, that vanished after telling themselves that they would go to bed, work, their wedding, ect. after just one more turn of the game!

In 1996, during in my third year of University, Civilization II was released, improving on pretty much every aspect of the first Civ game. In addition to improved SVGA graphics, there was more depth in almost every aspect of the game. There were more techs to research, more resources to develop, and more civs to play and/or negotiate with. One of my favourite features of it though, were the advisors in the game.

The early Civ games especially offered a variety of advisors offering insight into various aspects of your civilization. If your cities are undefended, your military advisor might speak up telling you to build more military units. If you ignore diplomacy, another advisor might get upset about that. In Civ2, the advisors were FMV (live-action video clips), a popular trend in mid-90s games. I particularly liked the one dressed as Elvis throughout history!

Released in 2001, Civilization 3 is the one I had the most problems with. For some reason, I had trouble getting some aspects of it to work properly. I could never figure out if it was just buggy, if they had changed aspects of the fundamental game that I never figured out, or I was just really bad at it! Despite wanting to love this one as much as the first two, I just never did, and spent most of the early 2000s play Civ2 when I felt the urge to play.

Luckily for me, in 2005 Civ4 was released, and for me, it was my favourite version of the game. It took everything I loved from the earlier games, cranked it up to 11, and added a bunch of new features as well. I loved the fact that it allowed you to set a timer in game so that you didn’t lose track of time while playing it, a feature not present in later games. My only complaint about it was that it started the trend of needing expansion packs to add new features to the game. Both Warlords and Beyond the Sword added new features, civs and leaders to the base game. At the time I didn’t think it was a big deal, but looking back I now see it as an ominous harbinger of things to come…

Civilization V, released in 2010, revolutionized the game map by switching to hexes instead of the tradition squares. This dramatically change the map and feel of the game. This was also the first Civ game that (I think) required Steam to play. That means I quick glance at my steam library tells me I’ve spent over 900 hours playing Civ5! This was also the first one I started playing multiplayer in, with my wife at home and online with one of my oldest friends. Unfortunately, it took several expansion packs, also called DLCs, before it became worth playing in my opinion.

Civ6 was released over 9 years ago, the youngest run between new releases in franchise history. Admittedly, a long history releasing DLCs with new civs and features went far in keeping the game from getting stale. In fact, there have been 18 different DLCs, some adding new features, many adding new civs and leaders. According to Steam, I’ve spent just under 1 700 hours playing this one since it was released! The biggest innovation in this one was being able to create sprawling cities covering many hexes, instead of the city just occupying just one tile. Once again though, it took several major DLCs before the game really felt fully developed.

So, releasing this Tuesday, February 11, what does Civ7 hold for this series? To be honest, I don’t really know. I’ve been trying to avoid reviews so that I can approach it without really knowing what to expect. Perhaps surprisingly, I don’t even know when I will buy and try it! With Civ5 and Civ6, I got them almost as soon as they were released and in both cases was a bit disappointed on how basic they felt at first. As I mentioned earlier, they both really needed a couple DLCs before the felt like finished games to me. As I type this, I am seriously considering holding off getting Civ7 until they’ve had a chance to patch it and release a DLC or two, but we will have to see what happens on Tuesday!