I love Civilization. It’s one of my favorite game series. I self-taught the original Civilization using a pirated copy with no manual when I was still in primary school and had barely any knowledge of English. Sigh. We go way back, Civilization and I.
Each time a new Civ comes out (Civ 2 - 4), I get super addicted for about a week, but then my interest drops rapidly. Figuring out the differences in gameplay with the previous installment is obviously pretty fun and rewarding at first. But I think there’s another reason why my excitement for these games has such a steep drop-off.
I think I enjoy strategy games a lot more when I don’t yet know all the rules, when I’m not yet ’seeing the matrix’ of the game. It’s that brief period when a granary is still just a granary in your mind, not “Stores 50% Of Food After City Growth/+1 Health From Corn, Rice, Wheat”. In that first week of playing a new strategy game, I easily imagine myself running an empire and make up all sorts of mini stories about it. I also take the time to name each city something other than their default. Sometimes I build things just because they look pretty.
Once I’ve figured out all the new rules, the numbers and percentages move to the foreground, and I sadly end up just playing the same game over and over again. Same terrain settings, same race and leader, same overall strategy — just grinding through it, by the numbers, constantly optimizing.
Last weekend I dusted off my copy of Civilization IV and reinstalled it, but this time forced myself to set everything to random. I also told myself to play completely opposite of what I would normally do. Guess what: I stopped wanting to do everything optimally and once again immersed myself a little in the world I was creating. I was happy.
Still, sometimes I wish I could unlearn everything about Civ (and SimCity and actually so many other games) just so I could re-experience it completely. The first person to build an Enternal Sunshine-esque machine I’m willing to pay very very handsomely.
Im pretty okay with playing it exactly the same way each time (Full out war, and no democracy). I must say I lost interest around CivIII.
I think a DS version of it will totally renew my interest though. I cant believe Sid never came up with that one. I want that game portable ever since the gba came out. I figured someone was bound to do it after Simcity came out for the gba. Someone should start a petition.
Yannis
January 24th, 2007
Hey Yannis! I completely agree that a DS version should happen. If I recall correctly Firaxis has hinted a few times that they’re looking into developing handheld games, but that is all for now.
Until the day comes there’s still Theme Park DS, SimCity DS or Settlers II DS to keep us entertained…
Marek
January 24th, 2007