Sid Meier's Civilization

Developed by MPS Labs and released in 1991 for IBM PC MS-DOS, Sid Meier's Civilization 1 (Civ1) is a turn-based strategy game famous for formalizing the feature-set of Civ-style TBS, thereby paving the way for Sid Meier's Colonization and Sid Meier's Civilization 2.

The original IBM PC version of Sid Meier's Civilization was programmed by Sid Meier, designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley and composed by Jeffery L. Briggs. The Civilopedia was written by B.C. Milligan, Jeffery L. Briggs and Bruce Shelley.

Unless otherwise noted all of my Civ1 commentary and screencaps pertain to the original, classic Civilization game by MicroProse (1991). And the original version of the original Civ1.

This article broadly treats Sid Meier's masterpiece, which is a massive subject matter that I have covered in a couple hundred posts. If the reader wants to understand the nuts and bolts of Civ, they will read the above-linked Terrain article.

Civilization Intro

The iconic Civilization intro consists of a series of slides that summarize the geological history of Earth, the evolution of Life and human pre-history up to the advent of civilizations, historiography and modernity.

The slides are partially animated with subtitled text:

In the beginning, the Earth was without form, and void.
But the Sun shone upon the sleeping Earth and deep inside the brittle crust massive forces waited to be unleashed.
The seas parted and great continents were formed. The continents shifted, mountains arose. Earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves. Volcanoes erupted and spewed forth fiery lava and charged the atmosphere with strange gases.
Into this swirling maelstrom of Fire and Air and Water the first stirrings of Life appeared: tiny organisms, cells, and amoeba, clinging to tiny sheltered habitats.
But the seeds of Life grew, and strengthened, and spread, and diversified, and prospered, and soon every continent and climate teemed with Life.
And with Life came instinct, and specialization, natural selection, Reptiles, Dinosaurs, and Mammals and finally there evolved a species known as Man and there appeared the first faint glimmers of Intelligence.
The fruits of intelligence were many: fire, tools, and weapons, the hunt, farming, and the sharing of food, the family, the village, and the tribe. Now it required but one more ingredient: a great Leader to unite the quarreling tribes to harness the power of the land to build a legacy that would stand the test of time: a CIVILIZATION!
-- MicroProse, 1991.

The Object of Civilization 1

The object of Civilization is to choose a tribe (a civ) and guide what becomes a civilization to conquer the world or colonize the Alpha Centauri star system. The campaign kicks off in 4000 B.C. of Antiquity but progresses through the epochs of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Industrial Age, culminating in a Space Race and looming Nuclear Warfare.

Complicating matters is that up to 13 other civs are attempting to achieve greatness as well. In addition the Barbarian hordes and planet Earth itself have a horse in the race (the planet via global warming aka climate change).

Much exploration, expansion, research, trade, diplomacy, espionage and outright war is conducted in pursuit of this objective. In the name of Progress civs:

Discover intellectual Advances (e.g., mathematics, science, philosophy, art, music)
Found, build and conquer cities
Irrigate terrain and build mines, fortresses, roads and railroads
Build city improvements, military units and Wonders of the World
Parley and trade with other civs

Similar to Frontier: Elite 2, Civilization ignited the imaginations of many players, both young and old. While games are no substitute for reading the great historians, scientists, philosophers and poets, it could be said that Civ1 has a degree of educational value that most games lack.

And even if the player has a classical education, that background knowledge can enrich the Civ experience and increase the amusement. One of the most amusing things is the yawning technological gulf that can exist between one civ and another; e.g., one civ is powering along in battleships whereas the other is still plodding about in triremes. Or one civ may sport a modern navy yet be forced to deploy cavalry on land, not tanks. Stark contrasts in civ progress are governed by multiple RNG and decision-making variables.

Moreover, optimal play can result in player-civs acquiring microchips during the Dark Ages while the own-zoned AI civs have barely progressed past pottery.

Civilization is one of the greatest games of all-time. The Civ franchise has long since become the Prime Mover of the Computer-game Industry and the Gold Standard of Computer-gaming --- for 33 years as of 2024. There are only a handful of games that garner the prestige that Civ1 gets and deserves; for example:

The above games are not only well-designed and coded, but they are also imaginative and visionary.

Civilization Game Turn

Civilization is a turn-based game. That is, actions by both player and AI are taken in discrete turns each of which corresponds to between one year and two decades of history, depending on the current year.

Before ending their turn by hitting the Enter/Return key, players take (usually a complex series of) actions such as moving, attacking and building among myriad City adjustments, which can be termed upkeep. Up to seven rival Civs then take their turn.

During the AI turn players may only interact with prompt menus which granularize the series of events while sometimes giving an option to avoid battle or end battle midway (such as through Truce).

Otherwise, players may not intervene in any way, shape or form until their next turn, at which point viewport control is returned to them. On their next turn, players take their next set of actions and adjust their strategies based on the preceding AI turn, as is often required.

Unlike SimTex games such as Master of Magic there is no separate tactical combat mode or dedicated battlescape because Civ1 is a pure strategy game that presents its action in one viewport.

Civilization Pioneering

Civilization pioneered several aspects of TBS games that would subsequently be improved upon by Colonization, Civilization 2 and SMAC. Examples include its combat system, its built-in Help System (Instant Advice) and its in-game encylopedia known as Civilopedia.

However, its turn-based gameplay, proc-gen terrain and fog-of-war are found in several older computer wargames, none of which are as good as Civ1 in terms of "the complete package".

Civilization is often erroneously referred to as a God Game. It isn't. Populous -- that is a god game. Even Powermonger is closer to a god game than Civ1. God games don't have direct unit control, god games don't need units to shape the world, and god games are usually not precise strategic games that emphasize player-interpretable stats.

Civilization was influenced by old God games, Empire Wargame and Railroad Tycoon, but Civ became its own thing by seamlessly melding together aspects of traditional genre --- it was different.

Civ1 is not necessarily a "4X" game either because you don't need to "eXterminate" the opposition in order to win. You can also win by colonizing Alpha Centauri. And en route to that objective you need not wage offensive war at all. Instead, you can employ Trade and Diplomacy to great effect.

Civilization is correctly referred to as a turn-based strategy game or The Civ Game. And games that followed its lead can be referred to as TBS or Civ games.

It is exceedingly rare that full-featured sequels eclipse austere originals, but Civ2 is superior to Civ1 in terms of strategy, tactics, user interface, presentation and playability. However, that is almost wholly due to the Advent of the API: the difference between Civ1 and Civ2 is far greater than the difference between Civ2 and SMAC -- or Civ2 and any subsequent Civ-style game.

That said, Civ1's oldschool charm cannot be denied. And Civ1 is in many respects seminal.

Civilopedia

The Civ1 Civilopedia is a computer-game encyclopedia that presents the accumulated knowledge of civilizations, complete with "hyperlinks." That is, you click on an entry to be taken to pictures, descriptions and stats that define the entry.

The above infographic shows the full listing, but each entry is categorized:

Each entry has a picture, a description and a stat-block that defines its purpose in-game.

While no replacement for reading the manual, the Civilopedia also covers some game concepts aka rules.

The Civilopedia is a cool innovation because it reduces the need to reference the game manual (cf. X-COM UFOpedia).

Civ1 Pre-Game Options

Setup aka Pre-Game Options are simple:

Customize World in four steps (optional) and then choose:
Difficulty level
Level of competition (no. of rival civs)
Civilization (tribe) and
Name

After which, we are presented with:

Civilization Viewport & Playing Field

The Civ1 viewport consists of a sidebar, OS-style drop-down menu and top-down playing field aka map display or geoscape. The above-mentioned Instant Advice is depicted above in the green panels, which by default "pop up" over the playing field during the game.

While Civ1 can be run in VGA or 256 colors, it does not take full advantage of that palette range. Indeed, I have seen 32-color Amiga-native games that evoke greater color depth. That said, Civ1 graphics are clear and serve their purpose.

The viewport is presented in a resolution of 320x200px, the playing field 240x192px or 14x12 squares aka tiles, and the total map size is 50x80 squares.

Civ1 employs avatar-anchorless screen-scrolling.

Oddly, even at that baseline 320x200 fidelity Civ1's scrolling is not smooth even though Amigas featured hardware scrolling in 1985 -- six years before Civ1 came out.

In fact, Civ1's playing field scrolls on a tile-by-tile basis. That is, the engine updates or "fills-in" the squares (aka tiles) instead of actually scrolling smoothly from one point to another on a per-pixel basis at 50 FPS.

But what does that mean in basic terms? It means you don't sweep over the map smoothly but rather jump about tile-by-tile or jump to coordinates. When you can only appraise 14x12 tiles at any given time, it is easy to lose your bearings during such jumps, especially when there is no bounding box that indicates the currently-selected square. And the tiny automap does not help much due to its lack of fidelity (78x48px). In addition to the automap, there should have been a dedicated interactable and annotated mapscreen UI mode.

Outside of expensive graphics workstations and coin-op chipsets, the Amiga was the only tech capable of hardware screen-scrolling at 50 FPS in 1987; that is, four years before Civ1 came out. And yet it was largely marketed as a family microcomputer.
Never forget the original Alienware: in terms of graphics-tech and several other hardware and operating system standards, Amigans were a decade ahead of everyone but the Arcadian and the graphics workstation operator at Silicon Valley.

Even MS-DOS Laser Squad (1988) employs a semi-smooth, super-fast, multi-directional auto-scrolling routine. Moreover, the Rebelstar Games (1984-88) on the ZX Spectrum (an 8 bit microcomputer powered by a 3.5 MHz Z80A CPU and a mere 48 KB RAM) employed a scrolling routine that is basically as advanced as the one employed by Civ1 on MS-DOS several years later. And while scrolling is not the most important thing in TBS games, smooth scrolling does enhance playability and is always preferred.

That said, what matters most is the functionality of the playing field.

And since it is an aspect of interpretable interaction, the biggest failure of the Civ1 playing field is the lack of viewable grid-lines which are toggleable in Civ2 and became a feature of every Civ-style game thereafter.

Criticism of proc-gen aka randomly-generated terrain: the algorithm is poor in that it often generates worlds consisting of awkward archipelagos instead of broad, Eurasia-like super-continents. Fixed in subsequent Civ games.

When playing Civ1, the kinds of landmasses you want to build on are as follows.

From this:

To this:

And from this:

To this:

The above images furnish prime examples of king-tier cities built on king-tier continents. Note the density of River squares: full-blown drainage basins capable of supporting glittering cultural centers.

Civ1 Menu

Civ1's OS-style drop-down menus are accessed by right-clicking the top menu bar. There are four drop-downs whose options call up dedicated UI modes or pop-up windows.

From left to right: Game, Orders, Advisors, World, Civilopedia.

Orders are context-sensitive to selected unit-type, terrain-type occupied by the unit as well as Advances attained, which is impressive. For example, Settlers orders are as follows:

Found New City (= Build a New City on a land square)
Build Road, Railroad, Mine and Fortress
Irrigate ( = build farmland)
Change terrain (terraform)
Clean Up Pollution

Note the lack of a load-game feature and the lack of embedded cheats in the above infographic. You can only load a game by first exiting to DOS, restarting and reloading from the main menu! It is good to inflict tedium upon lowly save-scummers.

One of the biggest mistakes the sequel made was embedding cheats to its menus just so the casuals could "win", too.

City Display Civilization 1

The famous dual-layered Civ1 City Display is not accessed via menu, but rather by clicking on city icons directly via the playing field. By "dual-layered", I mean that pop-up windows can appear over the base UI mode without needing to switch to separate screens (above-right). In addition, some pop-ups link into the Civilopedia.

Consisting of several interlocked panels, the City Display allows players to assign squares of the city catchment to be worked, build units, improvements and Wonders as well as allocate Specialists in Luxury, Tax and Research. In Civ 1-2 and SMAC, the Specialist mechanic commonly separates veteran from newbie play.

As well, garrisoned units and units originating from the city are displayed.

The City Resources sub-panel is also important since it allows players to monitor population, food harvest, food surplus as well as Shield Production, Research and Trade.

Food surplus is especially important to understand in Civ games. cf. Civ1 Terrain for more info on surpluses, Specialists and city catchments.

The playing field and City Display constitute the core of Civ1 interaction. During play, we are constantly switching between these two modes.

Note that right-clicking terrain squares calls up their Civilopedia entry, which is great. However, we should be able to right-click units to bring up their Civilopedia entries as well, but can't. And since not all unit icons are identifiable at a glance, this constitutes the second failure as regards interpretable interaction.

Civ1 Movement

Constituting Civ1's exploration, square icons representing ground, naval and air units are moved about in eight directions on a top-down, tile-based field of play either with the numeric keypad or in point-and-click fashion. To put it simply, Civ1 maps are basically square grids that make up terrain.

As the icons are moved about the grid, fog of war is removed to reveal the terrain, its landmarks and enemy forces and cities.

Wait. Where did I get eight directions from? Diagonal movement, son. Diagonal movement.

Even though diagonal movement reveals twice as many squares as vertical and horizontal movement does, it still costs the same in movement points: diagonal movement is King in Civ games.

Diagonally, a Roman naval vessel sails the high seas into uncharted territory. Upon reaching the coast of a far-flung continent, the Cavalry disembarks to begin exploration of the land.

The Cavalry is scouting for special resources, river systems, huts and other civs. They are exploring so that our civ can expand. In the meantime, the ship is going to map out the coastline.

Indicated by black-screen or blank unseen squares, fog of war represents a commander's lack of intelligence as it pertains to terrain. Fog of war is removed as terrain is explored: squares aka tiles are revealed based on unit visual range.

Unit movement points are refreshed on a turn by turn basis. In addition, movement rate is modified by terrain variables and movement itself is hindered by Zones of Control.

Under the rule of Zone of Control (ZoC) most units cannot move into squares that are squarely- or diagonally-adjacent to rivals if the unit is already rival-adjacent.

Key to unit strategy and annexation of cities, the object of ZoC is to simulate the difficulty of moving on battlefields among opposing forces. Once the player understands ZoC in and out, their combat gameplay reaches a whole other level of strategy. For example, they may employ vise-grip naval blockades to lock down entire regions.

The main problem with Civ1 unit movement is that we cannot Shift-key-click destination squares to have units automatically move to them, turn by turn. Instead, we usually have to manually move the unit square by square, holding its hand all the damn way. Because the Go To command is only reliable over short distances due to an abysmal pathfinding routine. And there is no hotkey for Go To either.

In addition, units often do not remain on railroad tracks under the Go To command. And when they do remain on-tracks, they only move a few squares at a time instead of the length assigned to them, which by rights can be as far as the railroad extends.

Civ1 Combat

When icons representing Civ1 Units attempt to move into squares occupied by opponents (be it city or unit) -- battle begins!

Battles between units consists of an automated offense-defense combat roll devoid of at-a-glance combat odds and stat-readouts. Not until Sid Meier's Colonization would there be a combat odds readout. However, stats are found in the Civilopedia and odds can be worked out from the stats. In addition, the type of terrain occupied as well as fortification impacts unit defense, which stats are also found in the Civilopedia.

An example is given in the manual:

If a Chariot (attack factor 4) attacks a Phalanx (defense factor 2), the Chariot has a 66% chance of winning (4 out of 6) and the Phalanx 33% (2 out of 6). If both units were veterans, the odds are 6 to 3. If both are veterans and the Phalanx was behind City Walls (which triples the defense factor), the odds are 6 to 9.
-- MicroProse, 1991.

cf. Chariot -- Phalanx -- City Walls.

The victor is awarded occupation of the square whereas the vanquished is utterly destroyed.

Since Phalanxes (Roman infantry units) can beat modern armored tanks with immersion-breaking frequency (20% of the time), Civ2 added hit points and firepower unit stats to make combat more realistic. In that case, a Phalanx that landed one or two lucky blows is still unlikely to defeat the Civ2 tank because the Civ2 tank has more soak.

Standard scenario: Battleships soften up coastline cities with broadsides from off-shore. Then, Transports carrying Cannons move in to take control of the cities.

In order to attack with full force, a unit must have at least one movement point remaining in its movement pool. If not, its attack factor is penalized by ⅔ or ⅓ due to fatigue (or it waits for the next turn).

Units can also skip their turn or wait during a turn. For example, a ship may wait for cavalry to arrive on the shoreline before setting sail instead of wasting the ship's movement potential by skipping its turn.

On the other hand, when units occupy squares adjacent to non-hostile opponent cities or units, there is the chance of parley (which may or may not result in battle).

Civ1 Amiga AGA:

During parley, discoveries can be traded, alliances can be formed and peace treaties can be signed.

Rejecting peace offers results in war declarations. As mentioned above, war need not be waged conventionally: Diplomats (which also play the role of spies) can facilitate:

Investigation of rival cities (view their City Display)
Meetings with rival leaders (treaties)
Defection (of Units)
Sabotage (of City improvements)
Espionage (of Advances)
Revolts and Subversions (= disrupt / take control of cities)

Civilization 1 Ending

Space Flight unlocks the Apollo Program which (along with other prerequisites) unlocks the ability to construct a spaceship aka starship, which is built over time and manually launched by the player.

It is often the case that spaceships are being built during nuclear warfare and/or severe global warming, which sets an out-and-out epic culminating stage that civilizations may not survive.

In the year 2000 voyagers from the planet Earth set forth on a journey of cosmic exploration.
A spaceship populated by 10,000 Roman colonists successfully bridged the vast distances between the stars.
Arriving in 2020 at the star system Alpha Centauri, these intrepid pioneers began the colonization of a New World.
-- MicroProse, 1991.

The spaceship's arrival in Alpha Centauri marks the victory condition, at which point the Powergraph, Civilization Score and Hall of Fame are displayed and civ progression can be replayed.

After the final score is given, players may choose to play on or retire. And since Civ1 is such a great game, most players will want to play again and again and again.

Civilization 1 Distribution Media

Civilization was distributed on 4x 3.5" 720kB DD diskettes, 2x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes or 2x 5.25" 1.2MB DS HD floppy disks. The install size is 2.5 megs.

Sid Meier's Civilization Manual: 126 pages.

Civilization 1 Windows Version

The Windows version of Civilization 1 (Win 3.x, 1993) has sharper graphics and plays smoother than the MS-DOS version. It also includes built-in Game Help, complete with tutorial.

Most notably, map-size is as big as the Windows desktop display size permits, instead of being limited to just 14x12 squares per screen.

But due its windows-based interface that runs over the OS GUI itself, the 3.x version is not as easy to set up for comfort and readability unless you know how to configure a virtualized Win 3.x-XP guest that is tailored to the game's display quirks and limitations.

For example, you will have to tweak the game's display settings, the guest OS's display settings and the virtualizer's display settings in order to get the best outcome. Depending on your specific setup, that can take some time.

Due to the windowed nature of the map screen, the Windows version should have had a zoom feature (like Civ2 for Windows does).

The bitmap graphics (e.g., terrain) are unpleasantly dark in the Windows version. And no, it is not an end-user gamma settings issue but rather a developer one. The visuals are simply too dark, hard-edged and cold.

In short, the best version of Civilization 1 is the MS-DOS version. The MS-DOS version is easier to set up, looks better and most importantly feels better to play, overall.

Take that from someone who has replayed Civ1 a few dozen times in 2024. I only play the MS-DOS version.

Civilization 1 Amiga Version

The Amiga AGA version features more on-screen colors than the MS-DOS version. Naturally, its music is also superior.

That said, the MS-DOS version of Civilization 1 plays faster and better if you know how to optimize DOS settings.

Note how Civ2 employs WinG API to great effect. Imagine if Civ1 ran natively in Workbench. Well that came four years later in Sid Meier's Colonization.

cf. Sid Meier's Civilization 2 --- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

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