h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Civilization – The Computer Game Franchise - A3824435
Author: GodBen-The god of doors, ducks, eunuchs, and car dealerships (O-&gt - U518809

It has always been a dream of mine to have two entries in Peer Review at the same time. Well not really, but I thought I should submit this anyway.

Very thorough.

Regarding Activision's acquisition of the Civ. name -- I don't recall the details very well, but I think there was some legal wrangling at the time; something to do with their having got the rights from the Civ. board game manufacturers, rather than from MicroProse.

Alpha Centauri perhaps warants a bit more coverage, given that it's what Sid Meier did between Civ. II and Civ. III.

I might do some sections on Alpha Centauri and Colonisation over the weekend, although I don't remember too much about either of them.

I'll do some checking on the whole Call to Power bit. I'm not sure, but I heard at the time that Activision bought MicroProse and so got all the licences to MicroProse games. But I'm not certain.

Actually, I just found this on some website: "CCTP is almost an entirely new beast and the brainchild of Activision, which gained access to the name after a court battle which saw Microprose (publisher of Civ and Civ II) and Avalon Hill (publisher of board games using the Civ name) each claiming that one or the other of the three parties was infringing on the copyright. The lawsuits were settled with the agreement that Microprose has the rights to the name but would license it to Activision."

OK, I've updated the entry. I've added that bit about Call to Power, and I've put in sections about Colonisation and Alpha Centauri.

I've never played these games, but you made them sound VERY interesting!

Good job!

A great write up - you've done very well to keep this to a manageable size and still give a flavour of the games and the style of play.

Excellent entry


Was wondering whether you should have a list of each nation, noting their leader and maybe there special unit or abilities

Thanks for the positive reviews, your cheques will be arriving in the mail soon.

I think that a list of nations for each game might get a little too long. Lets see, there's 14 in Civilization, 4 in Colonisation (not including the various Native American tribes), 21 in Civ II, 14 in Alpha Centauri and its expansion, roughly 40 in the two Call to Power games, and 31 in Civ III and its expansions. That's a total of 124 civilizations. While a lot of them appear in each Civ game, it would sill take up a lot of space.

Very good entry

Civ II was particularly good because it was so customisable
There are hundreds of scenarios for it on the web, many with custom units, rules, maps etc
Although the graphics etc aren't as good I still feel it was a better game than Civ III

1 thing it might be worth mentioning about Colonisation
As your colonies progressed you got to select Founding Fathers from historical figures that gave you special abilities

I put in the bit about the founding fathers in the Colonization section. I noticed while doing so that I had been calling it 'Colonisation' throughout the entry when it's actually spelt 'Colonization', so I fixed that.

I always call it Colonisation
This is a case when nobody can complain about you using the American spelling

'Colonization' is perfectly good British English; but we get a choice, whereas Americans don't.

-ize is apparently a more authentic representation of the Greek termination (here sandwiched between two bits of Latin), but -ise (which I think the French developed, though I'm not certain) has a more obvious relation to -ist and -ism.

'Analyze', on the other hand, appears to be an attempt to skew things in the opposite direction.

Indeed.

Happened to me:

"Just one more turn (then I'll have the dam nuke, and then...)"
"Oh look, the sun is rising"
"What??? 6:00????"

The civ games are really amazing. This Entry covers most of what there is to say about the games. Thank you for this Entry!

One minor thing: The Beginning starts off a bit too fast, IMO. Someone who does not know civ (and civ-like games) at all might get a bit lost... Suggestion (merely optional of course) -> Go along these lines: a) Civ is a game b) It can be loosely categorized under round-based "micromanagement" games (not entirely unlike the boardgame Risk, but with many more features). Then expand - if you want - what a micro..game is. (i.e. every round you get different types of resources - money, wisdom, food... and you have to assign and to manage these). The resources can be used to a) buid stuff, like Military Units b) to advance to more modern technologies (to build superior Military Units) c) to increase the population (this may lead to a production of more resources) d) etc...

Well... On the other hand, you probably don't want to give away all the details in the intro... What I mean is, this Entry might need a small, succint little intro for the ones who really don't know anything at all about this topic. The rest is really great, well researched and well-written...

HELL

It has happened to me too. I was going to do my 10 page assignment over easter weekend so that I'd have four days to do it, but I was too engrossed in a game of Civ III and didn't get any of it done. I'm very close to completing my spaceship though.

I've never been good at intros, I always leave them too short because I can't think of anything else to say. I'll try and fill it out a bit when I have time, but unfortunatly I have a 10 page lab report to do right now.

*Looks longingly at the Civ III box next to him.*

One turn couldn't hurt I suppose.

Oh no! See you in a couple of days...

HELL

If I recall correctly Sid Meier actually had a name for that phenomenon: the 'just-one-more-turn factor'.

I've always thought of it as the just-one-more-night factor

Well it took ages, and it took a lot of hard work, but I finaly did it. I built the spaceship and won the game.

I never did get around to writing that report.