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Civilization (video game): Difference between revisions
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[[File:civ1.png|link=Screw the Rules, I Have A Nuke|
{{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'''}}
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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 Meiers 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.
All aspects of the civilization are under the control of [[Non
It is (in)famous for leading to gameplay sessions that extend well past the player's original self-imposed deadline. [http://www.civanon.org/home.shtml So much, a joke 'Civilization Anonymous' website was made.]
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** On the flip side, some leaders ''will'' ask for peace, but only if ''you'' give all your money and loads of strategic and luxury resources, [[Too Dumb to Live|even if you are steamrolling across the empire]].
** Likewise, the minute you get two sources of a luxury in ''Civ5'', a bunch of other leaders will offer you a Declaration of Friendship. Their sole motivation is to ask you to loan them that second luxury source for free. (A canny player will turn down the Declaration itself, as accepting Friendship but then denying a request is a hit to your reputation.)
* [[The All
* [[Anachronism Stew]]: Somewhat unavoidable in a freeform game that features a myriad of historical civilizations, many of whom never existed in the same time/place as one another. Add religions and government styles to the mix and you have a recipe for oddness.
** One of the oddest examples of this is the ''Oxford University'' National Wonder in ''Civ IV''. The significance of Oxford, and the reason it's one of the world's leading establishments today is that it was the first University set up in the world (at least in any format we'd vaguely recognise today). However, in the game, you need to have built at least 6 other Universities to construct it...
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* [[Artificial Stupidity]]: So much over the various installments that all the examples were moved to the trope page.
* [[Ascended Fanboy]]: Aside from the first game, all the following games have been designed by people other than Sid who has generally only acted as an overwatching executive producer. Most notable in ''Civilization V'' in which the lead designer came from the modding community and is only around 25 years old.
* [[Ascended Meme]]: ''Civilization V'' has three: at the end of the tech tree are Giant Death Robots, a long running joke on several fansites; using a Great Artist to make borders expand is now explicitly named a "Culture Bomb", which was a [[Fan Nickname]] for the process in ''Civ IV''; and [[Mahatma Gandhi|Gandhi]]'s AI is tailored to put all his resources to building nukes.<ref>They must have been thinking about [
** Also, the option to continue playing a game after you won or lost is labeled [[Just One More Level|"Just...one...more...turn"]])
* [[Authority Equals Asskicking]]: Averted with Great Generals (and the mongol equivalent the Khan), who are [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|One Hit Point Wonders]] whose only offensive capability is to make other units stronger. But to be fair, the Great General is just one guy while the regular units presumably represent regiments (give or take depending on the era).
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* [[Diagonal Speed Boost]]: In every game up to ''Civilization V'', which is played on hex tiles.
* [[Easy Mode Mockery]]: The game compares you to a famous (or infamous) world leader after it ends. On easy mode, you can beat the AI by a mile and still get compared to "[[Warren G Harding]]," or worse, "[[Dan Quayle]]." See [[Take That]].
* [[Early
* [[Easy Communication]]: All of your soldiers and cities can be instantly ordered to do anything, even in the ages before radio. ''Possibly'' justified by having turns take much longer in earlier eras.
* [[Easy Logistics]]: Troops can "heal" (replenish their numbers) regardless of how far away they are from your civilization, and Civ 5 takes this a step further with the "instant heal" promotion. Incidentally, the same game has a Logistics promotion, which allows ranged siege units to attack twice in one turn.
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* [[Graceful Loser]]: Some of the leaders in ''Civilization V''.
* [[Have a Gay Old Time]]: In ''Civilization II'', when you changed governments, the newspaper would announce, "[Your Citizens] Are Revolting!" To which all the AI players' citizens would go, "Well, duh."
* [[Herd
** Not to mention nukes.
* [[Historical Beauty Update]]: ''Civilization Revolution's'' national leaders, especially the females.
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* [[Injun Country]]: One of the civilizations added in "Beyond the Sword" is "Native America"<ref>Their leader is Sitting Bull of the Lakota, their Unique Unit is the Cheyenne Dog Soldier and their Unique Building is the Haida Totem Pole</ref>. This historical inaccuracy is [[Justified Trope|justified]] in Civilopedia: it is explained that the "Native American Empire" isn't a historical empire, but a hypothetical result of the different Native American civilizations joining their forces.
** There is a mod that includes every major Native American civilization, [[Shown Their Work|using their own native names]].
* [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Mecha]]: Civilization 5's Giant Death Robot (yes, it's actually called that.)
* [[Instant Win Condition]]: Once an ending condition is reached, that civ wins, no matter how the actual situation looks at the time. There could be a massive column of tanks ready to flatten an enemy's capital, but if the spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri, they win.
** Or, more egregiously, by cultural victory. In Civ IV for example, you win instantly for getting your third city up to legendary culture, regardless of whether it's in the process of being destroyed.
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* [[Lost Technology]]: In ''Civilization V'', Ancient Ruins have a chance of giving a military unit a free upgrade. In the early game, you can get Archers, Spearmen, and even Swordsmen before researching them normally. It takes a turn for the absurd, however, when Ancient Ruins that have been sitting untouched since the beginning of the game can upgrade your Musketmen to Infantry, or your Tank to a Modern Armor. It's less likely to happen now since an official patch has made it impossible for a previously upgraded unit to receive this bonus.
** This was slightly more or less (depending on how you look at it) pronounced in the earlier games, which did not have Civilization-specific units. Thus, your military typically consisted of something of an [[Anachronism Stew]].
* [[Magically
* [[Medium Awareness]]:
** On rare occasions, when declaring war, Alexander the Great will look the player in the eye and ask, "You didn't really think I was going for a cultural victory, did you?" Hannibal does this too sometimes.
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** Beyond the Sword introduced the "Greed" and "Corporate Expansion" quests, which codify this.
* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]: In ''Revolution'', the modern era diplomacy advisor is clearly modeled on Condoleeza Rice.
* [[Non
* [[No Swastikas]]: The Third Reich is conspicuous in its near-total absence, although there is one quote from [[Adolf Hitler]] for ''IV'''s Fascism tech, and Erwin Rommel is featured as a Great General in ''Warlords'' (though Rommel wasn't actually a Nazi). The strange people who yearn for Hitler's inclusion in the series tend to note that [[Josef Stalin|Stalin]] and [[Mao Ze Dong|Mao]], who were just as nasty if not quite as infamous, are playable leaders (though [[Banned in China|no country with paying customers will ban the game because of them]]).
** Because of this, one of the best-known player mods to ''II'' is the so-called "Fascism Patch", which, in addition to doing a great many other things (bugfixes, better-looking units and so on) replaces the Fundamentalism government type with Fascism and gives the player appropriate units including the Stormtrooper (elite infantry) and the Dive Bomber.
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* [[Permanent Elected Official]]: You. Heck, not even ''TIME'' will free them from your rule.
* [[Please Select New City Name]]: The [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Politically
* [[The Power of Rock]]: Rock 'N Roll is a constructable Wonder of the World in ''Civ IV''. It even plays [[The Velvet Underground]]'s "Rock and Roll" during the movie. Thanks to the [[Tech Tree]], it usually gets finished around the same time a Diplomatic Victory becomes possible. Since building it allows you to export "Hit Singles," you can build global good will by giving them away for free right before elections are held, thereby literally winning the game via [[The Power of Rock]].
* [[Privateer]]
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*** Civilization V does this on water. Any embarked land unit can be instantly killed by any ship moving on them.
*** In Civ IV, on the lower difficulties, you are guaranteed to win your first encounters with barbarians. If you haven't used up these "free wins", you can create a barbarian modern armour with [[World Builder]] and your warrior will defeat it.
* [[Sand Is Water]], [[The Sky Is an Ocean]], [[Space Is an Ocean]], [[Lava Is Boiling Kool
* [[Save Scumming]]: Across all the games, it's disturbingly easy to abuse the save feature to get favorable battle outcomes or avoid negative randomly generated events. Some versions try to prevent this by saving the random number generator's seed along with the game, so you get the exact same outcomes after a reload unless you do things in a different order. This option can be turned off, however.
* [[Schizo
** This is pretty much bound to happen in any game where one player runs away with the science race, especially in ''Call To Power''. Screw tanks against spearmen - it's far more satisfying to send giant, missile-equipped robots after them. Or, go for the ultimate insult and use a space bomber to vaporize them.
** This problem was noticeably worse before the concept of technological eras was further developed in ''Civilization III''. In the first two games, one could climb disturbingly far up just one or two branches of the tech tree before finally having to go back and research, say, The Wheel.
** In ''II'' and earlier, you didn't necessarily even have to go back and research it. You could trade for techs without having all the prerequisites for them, so if you had all the follow-on techs, and didn't need the specific units or abilities that a particular tech gave you (chariots, in the case of The Wheel in ''II''), you could ignore it completely. Which could lead to hilarious exchanges with AI civs: "We notice that your puny civilization hasn't even discovered The Wheel. We'll gladly give it to you in exchange for the secret of the [[Tank Goodness|Automobile]]."
* [[Sci
* [[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
** The picture for "The Internet" world wonder is Al Gore.
** Some of the leaders' quotes are movie references ([[Die Hard (Film)|"Now I have a machinegunner. Ho ho ho."]]).
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** Also in ''IV'', if you've been at war with someone else for a while, one of the "War Weariness" descriptions is "WAR... What is it good for? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!"
** In ''V'' the music for the Helsinki city-state is "Ievan Polkka" by Loituma, a Finnish song best known from the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wnE4vF9CQ4 Leek Spin] meme.
** The [[Cosmetic Award|achievements]] for ''Civilization V'' are almost entirely [[Shout
** In the expert lumberjack's Civilopedia entry for the ''Colonization'' expansion, it states that "[[Monty Python's Flying Circus|they were lumberjacks and they're OK.]]"
* [[Shown Their Work]]: ''Rhye's and Fall of Civilization'', a historical simulator for ''the entire world'', is ridiculously detailed, with pretty much every tile named after a city that really exists there, and they change according to the controlling Civ. It's a [[Game Mod]], not something made by the developers, although one that usually gets included as a bonus in expansion packs for the game.
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* [[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]] [
* [[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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* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: The AI is fond of insulting your "puny little empire" even if you own half the world and are poised to run over them with a legion of tanks. "Now I have a warrior! Ho ho ho!"
** Sometimes the AI will still treat you like that after getting their ass handed to them in a previous war. Including eventually declaring war on you again and losing just as badly.
** Even better, sometimes the AI will ''declare war on you'' from that state, only to dash their army to pieces against your technological superiority. At this point they frantically sue for peace, bribing you with gold, resources and even cities. [[Attack! Attack! Retreat! Retreat!|To end a war that they started]].
** In Civ V, if the computer believes it has the upper hand in a war through some nebulous logic that apparently reaches this concussion even if you are rapidly blitzkrieging through their cities, it will offer you a peace treaty in exchange of essentially everything you own (money, resources, cities) except for your capital. To end a war ''you are winning''. Perhaps it’s betting on your hand twitching and clicking Accept by accident.
* [[Ungrateful Bastard]]: Tokugawa is a strict isolationist, and it takes ''ridiculous'' amounts of bribery to get him to even open his borders. If Japan is one of the rival empires in 4, you should probably just consider them an enemy and forget diplomatic measures - it's a lot cheaper.
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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]]: [[Hundred
** 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!]
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