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Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, or How I Learned to Deal With Change

Build an empire to stand the test of time.

It’s fascinating how certain bits of culture become associated with specific times in our lives. For me this has especially been the case for computer games, the first type of electronic gaming we had in our home after my parents bought their first computer in the early 1990s. As an adult, no series of games has forged these associations quite like Sid Meier’s Civilization series. While I dabbled in the fourth installment, it was Civilization V that truly hooked me. It was part of the tapestry of my time in grad school, and in fact I have found it hard to return to it since that time. That’s partially because I’m not in that time or place anymore, but it has more to do with Civilization VI, which came out a little over three years ago and has become my most played game in that time.

Interestingly enough, Civ VI came at an equally transitional time, as my family and I were preparing to move overseas. It went on sale on Steam mere days before our departure, and our busy schedule was such that I wasn’t able to complete my first game until we had already moved. Civ VI was there in the wee hours of jet lag, and as I got used to the reversed time zones there were a few 3 AM wake-ups where all I could do was fire up my new game. In my first three weeks in Asia I think I approached about 75 hours. It’s become my go-to strategy game, and indeed one of the only ones I enjoy with very little reservation. But it did take a little while to get there.

To understand why it’s important to consider the evolution of the series as a whole, particularly the transition to the fifth game. It was Civilization V that transitioned the map to a hex-based layout, and imposed a limit on how many units could be in one of those hexes. It was also a more transparent game than Civ IV, which by the end of its lifecycle had become quite sprawling. These changes were controversial in the overall fandom, but it explains why I was able to latch onto the fifth game instead of the fourth, which eluded me a bit. Civ VI keeps those same elements, making it feel like a more evolutionary game than its predecessor. But it’s far from a retread.

Nothing quite like seeing those Wonders get completed.

The big change in Civ Vi was to make cities take more than a single tile. Players now had to found a city center, where a few buildings were available, but everything that is even vaguely specialized now had to be put in a specific district. Science buildings required a Campus District, production buildings an Industrial District, and so forth. All of these districts got bonuses depending on their placement as well, so city layout was suddenly a huge consideration. Not every city can support a Theater District, so not every city will be much use for generating culture. This made city planning a lot more granular, requiring some considerable foresight to really make any sense of it at all. In fact, while the Civilization series has always been pretty heavy on micro-management, Civ Vi is a big step up from the previous installment. There were now two “tech trees” in which to advance, one for scientific discoveries and one for cultural. And then of course all of those wonders took their own hex as well, requiring even further planning. Lest we forget, when I first played it was without any of the expansions. Two of them have since been added, along with copious DLC. As of early 2020, Civ VI has sprawled out to incorporate city loyalty, governors, climate change, and a re-jiggered diplomatic subsystem. It’s a sort of frog-in-boiling-water situation for me, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to take it all in at once.

The upshot of all of this is that I liked Civ VI without really loving it. Meticulous planning has never been my strong suit, but this was a game that felt like it demanded it. It felt much fussier and slower to me, and I constantly forgot to tend to different mechanical subsystems. It was the first time I had been a fan during the release of a new installment, and I soon discovered it was a little like having to learn to tie your shoes all over again. Familiar strategies failed me, and concepts I thought I understood eluded me. I was basically enjoying myself, but it all felt so weird and foreign.

Always fun to play Civ and find a natural wonder from the country where you live.

How appropriate then that I would grow into Civilization VI while I experienced the arc of moving to a new culture. My surroundings were strange and unfamiliar, and the world around me didn’t function in ways I understood. There were many times that I longed to return to what was familiar. But the thought of returning gave me little pleasure. The unfortunate truth of life after a big transition is that it’s become impossible to recapture what came before. You’ve changed too much, and you can’t experience the old stuff without carrying the new stuff with you. Returning to Civ V pointed out to me all of the different things that I had now internalized from the newer game, and what used to feel comforting now felt kind of thin and unpolished.

I now find Civilization VI to be a much more satisfying game than Civ V. Some of the things I initially didn’t care for, like multi-hex cities, have become a source of much enjoyment. In older games, the cities eventually all took on the same flavor, since you could build every building in each of them. But now the cities have to respond to their surroundings, and your strategy has to adapt. I recently played a game as Teddy Roosevelt and America, and my intent was to pursue a cultural victory. But I had such a great placement, well-suited to science and production, that after about 100 turns I had shifted to a science strategy, one that paid off well. It just feels more adaptive, and the different leaders feel less scripted than they did before.

Another big change I appreciate is the combat, which feels much snappier than it did in Civ V. In that game it often felt like a battle of attrition, the stacking limit creating a slog of a fight that dissuaded me from ever pursuing a domination victory. I have never been much of a fighter in the first place, so I didn’t need much convincing. But it feels like Civ VI has a better handle on the stacking limit combat. I couldn’t begin to explain the mechanical causes of this, but combat feels less protracted, and a little less tilted in favor of defenders. I’m not at all sure why this is, but I know what I experienced, and I like it a lot. The importance of combat has also been tuned back from the original release. In the base game I found combat necessary at a very early stage, but after all of the expansions and DLC it feels like you can play a mostly peaceful game if you like.

It’s hard to read here, but there’s a subtle bit of social commentary for those who live in the Philippines in this picture. You may notice that Catholicism has been replaced by Jollibee.

Like any big change, there are things that I will never be wild about. It introduces a Religious Victory, where you have to convert the whole world to your religion. It’s fine in principle, but it doesn’t feel very organically integrated with the rest of the design, more of a parallel game happening alongside the main game. The recent Gathering Storm expansion reintroduced a Diplomatic Victory, but it feels like it requires a very specific set of variables to make it work. It remains the only victory I haven’t achieved, though I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.

But the things I loved, the stuff that has made me fall in love with Civilization in the first place, is all still intact. Going all the way back to the original 1991 Sid Meier design, the Civilization series has been a master class in short-term goals paired with long-term strategy. These games do such a great job of presenting you with all of the milestones that are just around the corner. You’ll complete Petra in two turns! There’s a World Congress coming up soon! You’ve almost finished researching a new type of government! Civ VI emphasizes this even more, by creating a timeline of all of the specific milestones your civilization has achieved. No matter how bad you play, accomplishment and affirmation is right around the corner, and when you look back on the whole game you’ll see the sweep of everything laid out behind you.

As long as Sid Meier’s Civilization keeps that quality, it will be the most popular strategy game series of them all. I’m not sure I’d characterize it as the best or the most accessible, but in my experience it’s the most addictive. You can get hooked without ever really understanding how to play well, to the point where hours can pass by and you barely notice. “One more turn” is the common refrain, and every Civ player since 1991 has experienced it. I’m glad I stuck it out through the rough early going, because it has proven to be a rewarding and addictive game. As I’ve moved to a new culture, Civilization VI has helped me process changes. It taught me that change is always tough, and that I have what it takes to get through it.

Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization

August 21, 2019August 26, 2019 NateLeave a comment

As a genre, civilization games always draw from a couple of really big influences. The first is the original Civilization game, designed by Francis Treshem and published by Avalon Hill in the early 1980s. That game takes a lot of DNA from Avalon Hill’s Diplomacy, with its map full of different empires that interact with each other through warfare and trading. Another major influence is that of Risk, one of the most influential designs of all time, full stop. Any time you play a game with army men and dice, you are probably, on some level, playing Risk. The last big touchstone is that of Sid Meier’s Civilization, with its emphasis on the full sweep of history, the creation of great wonders, and the combination of short term and long term goals that make that game so addictive. On one level or another most civ games are recombining these different elements in various ways. It’s hard to break out of the legacy of a single major design, let alone three of them.

Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization manages to stand out above the crowd. Originally published as Through the Ages in 2006, it represents perhaps the best complex design by Vlaada Chvatil, as well as his first real notable work as a designer. After a revised edition in 2015, it has come into its own as perhaps the most important civilization board game today. What’s striking about it is what it chooses to abstract, what it chooses to emphasize, and what it chooses to avoid. It’s a complex card game that is at once cumbersome and streamlined, violent and passive, infuriating and compelling.

What stands out to me the most about the game is its victory condition. In purely mechanical terms it boils down to victory points, but in game terms those points represent culture. You will get them in several ways, but the bulk of them will be generated by building structures like theaters and religious buildings, and by creating wonders like the Pyramids. I like this emphasis a lot, because thematically it’s hard to define what victory is in a civ game. How do we determine what civilizations have “won” in our own history? The ones who made the most money? The ones who conquered the most territory? Who knows? In Through the Ages, culture seems to represent that abstract quality of being remembered, regardless of how that legacy came about. Maybe your civilization made all sorts of amazing monuments. Maybe they created great works or founded an important faith. Maybe they used their military might to push their neighbors around. All of those ways ensure the memory of a civilization will live on. In its raw mechanics it’s just about finding different ways to generate victory points, but this focus on legacy says a lot about what we consider “great” in a civilization.Compared to something like, say, the multiple victory conditions in Sid Meier’s Civilization, Chvatil is doing something similar. The difference is that rather than giving us several different sub-systems that flow into different goals, we have a bunch of ways to get to a single goal. The only important thing is to be remembered, regardless of how you do it.

Most people who see Through the Ages for the first time will notice that it has no map. This is a pure card game, with any boards only serving as ways to make card play easier. It’s a design decision that almost seems a little flashy, like someone who’s right-handed using their left hand. But I think there’s a thematic purpose here too. Civilization games very often become displays of military might, with armies sweeping across continents and territories changing hands every couple of turns. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and games like Clash of Cultures have made hay out of being primarily games of conquest.

But here’s the thing about warfare: it’s expensive. It takes an enormous amount of resources to move people across the land so they can effectively kill other people. A lot of games seem to treat it as the default mode for countries. Every technology feeds back into it, and the design rewards warmongering above all else. It’s not a serious trade-off to commit to the military, and for a lot of people it’s just more fun. In Through the Ages the resource cost to invest in military is severe. It represents resources and workers that will not be invested in other places. Of course there are plenty of ways to make that investment more efficient, but that’s true for the other aspects of the game as well.

Make no mistake though, military here is a vital part of the experience. You need to have some situational awareness of what the military situation is, because countries that are too weak will get pushed around with no real recourse. The game provides several ways to make up that difference quickly, whether through a strong leader, advanced technology, or one-time bonuses, and you’ll want to use those for fear that your opponents will use them. Of course if everyone else is avoiding it, you can just focus on racking up points. Then again, you could also be the military giant and push them all around. Military and warfare is just one of the routes available in this game, but it remains a vital part of the game. Through the Ages feels like it is grasping the scope of how nations leave their mark by capturing all the ways it can happen, and that’s one of its biggest strengths.

Of course there are a lot of clever bits of mechanical design here. The one that I find most impressive is how it handles all of the resources and buildings that normally go into this genre. Yellow cubes are used to represent workers, who essentially become buildings when they are put into play on a card. There they will generate resources every turn, represented by blue cubes. So a yellow cube on an oil well, which generates 3 resources every turn, will generate one blue cube worth 3 resources every turn. Yellow cubes can also become military units when places on military cards, which then generate a certain amount of static military strength. It sounds complicated, but it’s very intuitive when you see it in play, and it keeps the game from getting too cluttered with shuffling resources. There’s also a system of corruption and happiness, meant to keep players from producing too inefficiently or from churning out too many mouths to feed. Even with this in play, one sometimes feels like they’re spending half of their time moving cubes from one spot to another. It’s staggering to think what it would have been like if the game didn’t use these multi-use cubes.

The other mechanic I want to praise is the line of cards. There are 13 of them available every turn, but they function like a conveyor belt. When cards are bought, everything to the right slides left and new cards come in at the right end. Cards closer to the end cost fewer actions to take, but some of them also fall of the edge at the end of every turn, so timing is a big factor. This is a great feature, because it sets the pace for the game. Once you internalize the not-inconsiderable ruleset, the game has a great flow. Each of the three ages feels like it’s over at about the right time, and the selection of cards never stagnates. I might have appreciated just a little bit more flexibility to go with this dynamic flow, since there are times when, for example, you need a really good production card and it just won’t come up. But that comes down to making sure you use your actions wisely, which sometimes means you need to just splurge and take something early. And anyway, the tradeoff of a more dynamic experience is well worth any minor frustration.

That touch of frustration is part of what has kept me coming back to Through the Ages over and over again. I understand the game mechanically, but it’s a very subtle design. Small decisions made early on might seem insignificant, but they can add up quickly. You can find yourself behind in some vital area like science or military, and not be quite sure how you got there. A lesser game would punish you for the rest of the game by just making you play from behind. But Through the Ages provides cards that become more and more efficient as you go, so you can use an area of strength to shore up what might be an area of weakness, sometimes literally, since it’s possible to get workers moved to different places on the board in a pinch. Then of course there’s the long process of learning what cards are best, and how they interact with each other. All of this adds up to a game that is surprisingly intuitive, but that will require lots of experience to get better at.

through the ages app — A game in action on the excellent app.

Vlaada Chvatil has, since the original release of Through the Ages, become known for his punishing design philosophy. Games like Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert contain phases that actively try to destroy what the players have accomplished. Through the Ages is, in this regard, a gentler game. Still, this is also quite a complex game, and it will take a while when played face to face. Fortunately there is a terrific app, probably the single best board game app I’ve ever played. It is easy to connect with friends, and it supports asynchronous play well. Most of all, it removes the need to physically move cards and cubes around the table. I do prefer the game face-to-face, but this is not an easy one to get played for my lifestyle, so I appreciate having the app there for me. There’s also an expansion coming out later this year that will add new wonders and leaders. The latter will be especially welcome, since the variety of leaders in the original game is disappointingly Euro-centric. Hopefully the expansion will address that.

It’s easy to over-invest in civilization games. They are at their best when they are lengthy and complex, because such gameplay is appropriate for the full sweep of history. But in that class, I think that Through the Ages is probably the most strategically rewarding game, and it feels more thematically satisfying to me as well. It’s a great example of how Euro design ideas can revitalize and refocus old genres to create something unique and satisfying.