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Civilization (video game): Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"I have discovered. I have led. I have conquered. I have inspired. I have [[Once an Episode|built a civilization to stand the test of time]]. What will your civilization stand for?"''|'''''Civilization V'' trailer'''}}
[[Civilization]] is a popular [[4X|"4X"]] game developed by [[Sid Meier]]. The original game was developed in 1991, and there have been four [[Numbered Sequels|direct sequels]] ([[Mission Pack Sequel|all of which are sequentially improved refinements and updates on the basic concept]]), numerous expansion packs, and many spin-offs (''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', ''[[Colonization]]'', ''[[In Name Only|Civilization: Call To Power]]''), as well as the much simplified ''Civilization Revolution'' for home consoles, the [[Nintendo DS]] and iPhone, and ''Civ World'' for [[Facebook]]. The game was originally inspired by a [[Board Games]], and has since [[Recursive Adaptation|spawned two others]]. Many polls and lists of the best computer games ever developed have, at various times, listed several of the games in the series, often at #1.
The general concept is that the player controls a civilization from the stone age through the present day into the space age. The first installments gave you two ways to win: conquering everyone, or [[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri|sending a colony to Alpha Centauri]]. Later, three more conditions were added: get elected leader of the world by the [[United Nations]], controlling a dominant chunk of the planet (which kind of obsoletes the "conquer everyone" goal, which is probably why it was removed again later), or create a culture so influential that it engulfs everyone else's.
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** The Great Colossus wonder in Civilization V used to be this. It had a nice benefit, but was lost once a certain, rather early, technology was discovered by any player. It was later patched to have a slightly different effect and not become obsolete.
** The [[Ascended Meme|Giant Death Robot]] in V comes so late that anyone aiming for a domination victory will probably get it before having an opportunity to build the GDR. It also requires uranium which could be used on the earlier and quicker-to-build nuclear options.
* [[BFS]]:
** A majority of leaders in ''Civilization V'' carry swords with them when you meet them for diplomacy, but special mention must go to Askia and [[Oda Nobunaga]]. Askia carries an impressive-looking two-handed broadsword, and Nobunaga carries three giant katanas!
** On the unit side of the scale, broadswordsmen fall on this category.
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* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]: Alarmingly common in ''Civilization V'', from tearing through a undamaged city with a [[Humongous Mecha|Giant Death Robot]] or to seemingly exaggerated and extreme cases of bringing down an Enemy Empire with five [[Tank Goodness|Modern Armor units]].
** It's even worse (or better) due to the inclusion of the "heal instantly" promotion: units gain experience from taking damage and surviving, so if one has a high enough defense, gets reduced to one HP, and gains a level, they can be back to full strength immediately the next turn. In other words, ''attacking them only makes them stronger.''
* [[Cutscene]]: The Wonders get them. In ''Civilization II'' these [[Full Motion Video|were made of]] [[Stock Footage]], later games have renders.
* [[Damage Over Time]]: In ''Civilization II'', helicopters received minor damage for every turn they spent in midair -- this was intended to simulate their limited fuel reserves without requiring them to return to base every time. Later ''Civ'' games removed this.
* [[Defeat Means Friendship]]: in Civ 5, Germany will sometimes recruit encamped barbarians and the Ottomans will recruit naval [[Fan Nickname|barbs]] after defeating them. In the fan-made [[Ni GHTS]] mod, every civ gets these abilities.
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* [[Encyclopedia Exposita]]: The Civilopedia, which contains just about everything you need to know about the game's structures, units, technologies, terrain and resources, with a smattering of Actual History scattered throughout.
* [[Everyone Meets Everyone]]: Normally the main action in the beginning of the game.
* [[Everyone Is Bi]]: Leaders who flirt with the player at high relation do so regardless of the gender of the leader selected by the player. Catherine the Great in ''Civilization IV'' is particularly notorious.
{{quote|'''Catherine''' ''We were defeated, so this makes me your slave. [[Fetish Fuel|I suppose there are worse fates]].''}}
* [[Everything's Worse with Bears]]: Bears are the greatest menace to early explorers in ''Civilization IV''... at least until the roving barbarians get their hands on [[It Got Worse|bronze weaponry]].
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** The official [[Expansion Pack|Beyond the Sword]] [[Game Mod|mod]] "The Next War" also features one.
* [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels]]: Just click the link, there's a big list on the trope page.
* [[Inferred Holocaust]]:
** In an eerily literal example, one of the expansion packs to ''Civilization III'' includes a [[Those Wacky Nazis|fascist]] government type; immediately after a civilization adopts fascism, it suffers a slight population loss for a few turns, presumably as `undesirables` are, ahem, [[The Purge|purged]] by the [[Secret Police]].
** Forced labor (present in several forms of government in the same game, and under the Slavery civic in ''Civ IV'') has pretty much the same connotation. More liberal forms of government replace this method with the standard option to rush-build things by throwing enough money at it.
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** Added on to in ''V'': Napoleon gets free culture per turn until Steam Power is discovered.
* [[Just One More Level]]: Some games directly invoke this by prompting the player with the option "Just one more turn" after they win the game or when they try to quit.
* [[Katanas Are Just Better]]: Played straight in ''III'. The best time to be playing Japanese is during the Medieval Era in that game. Once you get access to the Samurai, you can hack and slash your way through any and all other Civs using a pure Samurai force, until the gunpowder era finally renders them obsolete.
** Play somewhat straight in 4, as well. Instead of replacing knights, samurai instead replace Macemen, who are the best melee units in the game. Against other melee units, the samurai's strong attack and First Strikes make them damn near unstoppable. Against knights, which serve as the medieval cavalry unit, [[Curb Stomp Battle|it's a whole 'nother story]].
* [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better]]: You can play this game far into the future as you like, rack up a bunch of "Future Techs", discover Fusion Power and journey into the stars. However, weapons technology will never pass the modern day era. Can be averted with player-made modifications or official scenarios, such as Next War and Final Frontier in ''Beyond the Sword''. The non-canonical ''Civilization: Call To Power'' averted this trope by introducing two new Ages: Genetic and Diamond, featuring advanced plasma and fusion-based weaponry.
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** mind you, Catherine averted this on earlier games, being shown as some kind of [[Grande Dame]] or [[Big Beautiful Woman]].
* [[Multiple Endings]]: Multiple win conditions, actually. The first two games had the warlike method (conquer every other civilization) or the peaceful method (send a spaceship to another planet). Later games introduced diplomatic, cultural, or domination-based victory conditions.
** Domination was taken out, and ''Revolution'' added Economic: Have 200,000 gold and build the World Bank wonder. Sadly this was not included in 5.
** The diplomatic victory has changed quite a bit. In ''IV'', it was about getting enough votes to become supreme leader (good luck doing this in a multiplayer game). In ''V'', it's mostly financial. City states make requests from time to time, and if conquered by another civ, you can liberate them to guarantee a vote from them, but in practice, most influence with city states is simply bought with gold, ''especially'' if other players are competing for diplomatic victory.
* [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules]]: When playing on the higher difficulty levels in ''Civ V'', the AI doesn't actually get smarter but instead relies on simply ignoring the game rules that limit the player's own success to do as it pleases.
** The main way of controlling the player's expansion is happiness. Playing on the Prince ("normal") difficulty, the AI only gets 60% of the unhappiness that the player does, and gets more happiness to start and an extra point of happiness for each luxury. This roughly translates to allowing an AI Civ to be twice as large as a human one with the same level of happiness, on normal, the difficulty where "The AI receives no particular bonuses".
** In earlier games, it would simply decide "now's a good time to instantly build a wonder". Nowadays, the cheating is mostly relegated to numbers; a lot of them.
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** The "World War II: Road to War" mod included with ''Civ IV: Beyond the Sword'' solves this problem by including two versions of each scenario -- one with Hitler, and one in which he is replaced with Franz von Papen. The former is presumably taken out in countries where Nazi symbolism and direct references to the Third Reich are banned.
** Most egregiously, the German version even omits Hitler's name in the aforementioned Fascism tech quote, and instead gives "a German dictator" as source.
* [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent]]:
** The intro movie for ''Civilization V'' has a Arabic Chieftain explaining a dream of world domination to his son. For some reason, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMW5-YXTKtY both speak with heavy English accents]. Of course, since he dreams of his people being samurai, building the Great Pyramid, storming a castle, and being Norse invaders, the two are likely suppose to represent a generic vision of humanity rather than a specific civilization.
* [[Nuke'Em]]: Across all the games, nuclear weapons are by far the most devastating weapon it's possible to build (but see [[One-Hit Kill]] below). Using them, however, is something of a [[Moral Event Horizon]] as far as the game is concerned, causing all AI players to declare war with you automatically and leaving horrendous pollution behind, beginning a catastrophic period of [[Global Warming]]. Interestingly, in ''IV'' you can get the [[United Nations|UN]] to sign a nonproliferation treaty banning the building (but not use) of nuclear weapons, and an advanced player can sometimes do this after building his own nukes, [[Manipulative Bastard|leaving himself the sole nuclear armed power in the game]].
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* [[Opening Narration]]: In the first game, this was used to cover the [[Loads and Loads of Loading]]. In the fourth game, it was brought back as a tribute... And recited by [[Leonard Nimoy]]! ''V'' has [[Gargoyles|Xanatos' dad]] doing the opening narrations as well as the quotes for when you research something.
* [[Overt Rendezvous]]: In the intro to ''Civilization IV'''s expansion, an image of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg address [[Match Cut|Match Cuts]] to his memorial, where two spies are passing along photos of Soviet missile sites.
* [[Path of Greatest Resistance]]: This is very useful to determine the point of origin of an enemy (Barbarian or Civilized) whose camp/cities you haven't found yet.
* [[Permanent Elected Official]]: You. Heck, not even ''TIME'' will free them from your rule.
* [[Please Select New City Name]]: The [[Trope Namer]].
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* [[Privateer]]
* [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]]: Some leaders act this way in the dialogue, although their behaviour towards you may not be that honorable.
* [[Puppet State]]:
** In one of the Expansion Packs for ''Civilization IV'', any sufficiently powerful civ can make any sufficiently weak civ into their vassal state. If the vassal grows powerful enough (there are exact numbers), it can regain independence.
** In Civ 5, you can't make an entire civ into one, but when you conquer an enemy city you have the option between annexing it (which simply makes it on of your civ's cities, but generates a lot of unhappiness until a courthouse is built) or making it a puppet (which gives all the science, culture, and gold it generates to your civ, but you cannot control its production, for either buildings or units).
*** Puppeted towns are also automatically set to focus on gold production, making them fairly useless for any other purpose.
* [[Random Event]]: Introduced in the ''Civilization IV'' expansions. A lot of them are just random things that affect improvements and tile output (mine collapses, tornados, striking a deposit of jade), while others can change your relationship with your neighbors, such as a politically-arranged marriage collapsing or a high-ranking intelligence agent defecting. Other Random Events depend on your government, such as your hereditary dynasty dying out or [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|an election being too close to call and being settled by the courts]], giving you an incentive to try out as many Civic combinations as possible.
** ''Civilization V'' uses this for city state requests. Especially when they ask for a certain resource or want another city state eliminated.
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* [[Screw the Rules, I Have a Nuke]]: Invoked by the leaders before the negotiations in the first two games: "Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"
* [[Separate but Identical]]: In full force in the first two games. Installments after ''III'' moved away from this by giving unique units and buildings to each civilization and different traits to each leader, but all civs still draw from the same [[Tech Tree]] (with all that that implies).
* [[Shout-Out]]: Many.
** The picture for "The Internet" world wonder is Al Gore.
** Some of the leaders' quotes are movie references ([[Die Hard|"Now I have a machinegunner. Ho ho ho."]]).
** Every game is guaranteed to contain at least one reference to [[Elvis Presley|the king]].
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* [[The Stoic]]: Augustus Caesar in ''Civ 5''. Everything he says, including a declaration of war or the announcement of his total defeat, comes out bored and monotonous. His body language isn't more vivid either: he sits on his throne and occasionally waves a hand as he speaks. It's possible that [[Fridge Brilliance|this is him after the Battle of the Teutoburger Forest]].
* [[Suspiciously Small Army]]: A "unit" can be anything from one ship or aircraft to 10 soldiers, depending on the game. Most players, however, seem to regard this as a non-issue, regarding land and air units to represent larger groupings (what seems to be ten Riflemen is actually a whole division of rifles; what seems to be one Jet Fighter is actually a whole wing of jets). For naval units, early units like Galleys seem to be groupings, but it would actually make sense for later units to be individual ships (those things are big and expensive enough, and tend to be built in smaller numbers anyway).
* [[Sweet Polly Oliver]]: In ''Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword'' the ordinary spy at earlier ages is a woman disguised as a shepherd with a fake beard. When the age advances she drops the act and dons a [[Spy Catsuit]].
* [[Symbology Research Failure]]: The Kremlin world wonder... [[Running Gag|is actually]] [[wikipedia:Saint
* [[Take That]]: After your score is computed, it shows where you rank among a list of historical leaders. At the top are people like [[Emperor Augustus|Augustus Caesar]], [[Abraham Lincoln]], Hammurabi, Charlemagne, and [[Winston Churchill]]. At the very bottom? [[Dan Quayle]]. Quayle's "the future will be better tomorrow" quote is also read by Nimoy in ''IV'' when you research your first Future Tech.
* [[Tech Tree]]: Generally containing upwards of 80 technologies. Of course, it does take 6,000 years to climb to the top of it.
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* [[Unstable Equilibrium]]: Present in all ''Civilization'' games. An empire that manages to secure good territory early on can research faster and produce more units, making it easier for them to expand even further. The endgame is typically resolved between two or three strong empires while the weaker ones have already been wiped out or reduced to barely influential lapdogs with practically zero chance of winning.
* [[Useless Useful Skill]]: Some of the Civics in ''Civ IV'' were notorious for being worthless -- most notably Environmentalism, which granted a bonus for a resource (forests and jungles) that you'd more than likely eradicated by the time you became able to use it. Environmetalism became ''far'' more powerful in the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion.
* [[Video Game Caring Potential]]: [[
** It's a part of gameplay for ''V''; a City will require a certain resource and if you can get the required resource the local populace start getting busy.
* [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]: Poison your neighbors' water supplies! Bomb farmlands and cause the starving deaths of millions! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWzMeLdU6FA Nuke Gandhi!]
** ''[[The Dog Shot First|Gandhi nuked me first!]]''
** In addition to allowing (read: encouraging) you to use slavery, Civilization also entices you to wipe out entire nations. If you manage to subjugate or genocide every race but your own, the game declares you a winner.
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