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The last standalone video game system I owned was
Colecovision in the early 1980s. We had a collection
of about five or six truly pathetic games, among them
Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures and Tutankhamen (none
so glamorous or trendy as Pitfall or Donkey Kong).
When the personal computer finally entered our household,
I played Kung Fu Master, Paperboy and Spy Hunter on
my Commodore 128, often using the old Colecovision
controller as a joystick; but I never pursued these
to the point of what you could classify as obsession.
Doom and Quake on my Windows laptop were both fun
but repetitive and unrewarding. Later still I dabbled
in The Sims to see what all the fuss was about. I
found it to be the very epitome of futility. Why play
a game simulating real life to the very last detail
when there’s a real life waiting to be lived?
Grand Theft Auto III was another matter altogether
— finally, a video game without restrictions!
— but it wasn’t enough to entice me into
buying a PS2.
Civilization was something I happened upon by chance
and, like so many great books and albums I’ve
come across in my life, I hated it at first. I recall
my friend Kevin — now a high-flying programmer
in New York earning more in a year than I will earn
in a lifetime — sitting in front of his PC and
clicking away (this was back in the primitive days
of Civilization II), while I sat on his bed, my resentment
growing exponentially, wondering when the hell we
were going to leave for the beach. The day was marching
onward, sunlight fading, tides changing, and we were
stuck in his dark bedroom like troglodytes. “Just
one more go, man,” he’d say. “I
have to claim this spot before the others do.”
It made no sense. This fellow Sid Meier, the man credited
with the creation of the Civilization franchise, had
made a zombie of my best friend and was indirectly
robbing me of precious time at Deauville Beach.
Some time afterward, when I got a bit more Web-savvy
and a broadband connection, I got a copy of Civilization
III (you may read into those facts what you wish).
I tried it out to see what had hooked Kevin, choosing
to play my first game as, if I remember correctly,
the formidable-looking Romans. The game began with
a settler and a worker, and I spent a good time wandering
around to find a nice place to settle and work, until
I finally stumbled across another civilization —
the Persians, I think, who promptly killed my settler
and my worker and ended my game. I gave it another
go as someone who looked a bit tougher, the Zulus,
and had the same thing happen, even though I got a
scout at the beginning too. Complete rubbish, I thought,
and put the game away for many months.
A lingering sense of curiosity compelled me to pull
out the game the second, and most fateful, time. Suddenly
the strategy became apparent: settle quickly, build
towns, create troops, explore the landscape, battle
barbarians, discover neighboring civilizations, new
find luxuries (dyes, incense, spices) and resources
(oil, saltpeter, iron, uranium), research science,
trade and extort allies and enemies, erect great wonders
for cultural and military value. It was glorious,
as psychologically engrossing and intricate as a chess
game. Of course, I wound up on the wrong end of a
few unfair military alliances, and it took weeks of
enduring crushing debt before I figured out how to
moderate citizen happiness and science spending. But
every game was deliciously different. The geography
changed. The neighboring civilizations changed. The
available resources changed. I could exploit certain
advantages when playing as one civilization —
the Germans, for example, who are militaristic and
scientific; or the Greeks, commercial and scientific
— while learning their weaknesses to better
defeat them when I played next time as someone else.
Above all, I came to appreciate the delicate balance
of things. Not a single turn could be spared. A lone
pikeman who didn’t arrive at his destination
soon enough could spell the end of a besieged town.
Starting a Great Wonder behind schedule could mean
that a rival builds it earlier, resulting in a major
loss of resources. Discovering new land without a
ready settler and defense troop to hand is as good
as giving the land to someone else. One of Civilization’s
many lessons is that there is no time to lose; there
is only time to waste.
This is how I came to understand the significance
of “Just one more go, man.” The Pyramids,
the Great Wonder that instantly puts a granary in
every city on the same continent, were complete in
seven turns. I had to stick around to see if we completed
them before the Babylonians, right? The Aztecs were
attacking my weakest city and I had to fortify it
before ending the session. Who knows what the outcome
might be if I were to quit the game at that moment?
It eventually reached a shameful point where I preferred
to skip lunch than break away from my current civilization.
Some nights I was staying up until two or three in
the morning building an army to combat the Egyptians,
or finding a way to outmaneuver the French to get
the unclaimed lot of saltpeter. And even when I managed
to tear myself away from the game and climb into to
bed, the logistics of past, present and future were
still swirling around in my head. Should I have invaded
the Russians two moves ago? Should I build an aircraft
carrier to block an enemy harbor? If so, I’ll
need a battleship to defend it, won’t I? Which
town can spare enough resources to build a battleship?
Will it cut into science spending? And so on, and
so on. I dreamt in terms of espionage and gold and
diplomacy.
If this sounds unnatural and even pitiable, I can
assure you it was and still is. Playing Civ III makes
me feel like a man in the depths of a powerful addiction,
hating himself and his condition, despairingly aware
of the inconvenience and injury it has caused others
and himself, and yet utterly unable to stop. For solace,
he retreats further into his favorite means of escape.
The cycle, once started, has no easy end.
But this is precisely why Civilization makes for
such great gaming. This is why it has managed to thoroughly
ensnare an unsuspecting non-gamer like myself, and
it’s why countless others find themselves similarly
afflicted. It’s why sites like the Civilization
Fanatics’ Center have sprung up and continue
to flourish with almost daily updates even now, three
years after the last major version made its appearance.
With the much-anticipated version four in the works
and scheduled to appear next year, we will probably
witness a sharp rise in Civilization addicts, some
of them repeat offenders who’ve fallen off the
productive-living Civ III wagon and onto a Civ IV
binge. Having given up playing Civ III (at least long
enough to write this overdue essay), I fear that I
may nevertheless count myself among that number. Apologies
to my editors in advance.
http://www.civfanatics.com/
http://www.civ3.com/
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