Civilization Revolution and the Limits of Simulation (plus bonus elfgame thoughts!)

Part of me worries I was too harsh in my review of Unsung, because that’s not entirely their fault. I'd been thinking a lot about simulations and the lessons they can give in the context of one of my old childhood video games.

I have a lot of criticisms of the Sid Meier’s Civilization series of games, whether its their attempts to give history a "win" condition, treating real groups of people as though they have certain bonuses like they’re an Elf in Dungeons and Dragons, or focusing on great people or ideas at the expense of common folks. They’re still damn fun games, and I love talking with my dead about whatever atrocities he’s inflicting on his neighbors this weekend before inevitably winning a Cultural Victory by accident. Today though, I’d like to talk about my first real Civilization game (after the Colonization Remake), Civilization Revolution, where its attempts at simulations fail to capture history, and why any of that matters at all (with a bonus for how you can apply this kind of thing to your home game!). 

Don't get me started on Cleopatra

A quick rundown of Civilization for those unfamiliar with the series: in Civilization, the player takes control of a Civilization, representing a particular people (Americans, Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, etc.) Starting just after the discovery of agriculture, the player is then tasked with exploring the world, expanding their domain, exploiting natural resources, and exterminating their rivals. The player seeks to “Win” by achieving some form of dominance, whether military, cultural, diplomatic, or technological.

In a lot of ways, Revolution is your standard Civilization fare: you’ve got cities, tech, wonders, Catherine the Great that awoke something in me, normal stuff. One of its interesting quirks is that in each era of the game (Ancient, Medieval, Industrial, and Modern) each Civilization gets a bonus. For instance, the Russians can build the rifleman unit quicker during the Industrial era. For the purposes of this blog though, we’re going to talk about one Civilization in particular: Arabia.

Rip to those poor fools who had the 360 version, I was built different

Of interest here in particular are the From Start and Medieval Age bonuses, and how they somewhat conflict with each other in attempting to tell the historical “story” of this people. The rest can all be relatively easy figured out (from Silk Road trade routes to the financial power of the gulf states today). 

Starting with the Medieval Age, knowledge of Mathematics is clearly supposed to represent the advancements in mathematics and science during the Islamic Golden Age. Fair enough. However, at the same time, the Arabs start with the Religion technology, a normally medieval-era technology that grants its first discoverer a cultural bonus (again, Islamic Golden Age)...and the Fundamentalism government type. 

Governments in Civilization Revolution function as a series of tradeoffs (for instance, Democracies get bonuses to trade and science, but can’t start or continue wars, which…oof). Fundamentalism provides the civilization’s units with a bonus to attack and defense, at the cost of Libraries and Universities no longer producing science. While I get what they're going for, it also means that this period of Islamic history, part of which was defined by the rule of a fused religious and secular authority, is reduced to a single tech.

This is what critic Chris Franklin (linked in the video above) dubbed “Great Thing History,” in contrast to Great Man Theory. Rather than history being driven by people, it is driven by Things: techs, wonders, and strong, unitary states with a continuity unlike anything seen in the real world. The Arabians don’t get bonus interest on gold reserves because the land they habit has an incredible concentration of mineral wealth. They get it because they are the Arabians.

So why does this matter? It’s a video game, after all. But…that’s kind of the point. To paraphrase historian Bret Deveraux, simulation has a tremendous persuasive power. I know that for me, as a young lad, I constantly pored over the Civilopedia, reading through things and then going on wiki-dives. The information I soaked up is still in me, and influences how I see the world, and its the kind of thing that should be handled responsibly.

Surprise! We’re talking about elfgames now!

I am hardly the first person to notice that the way Dungeons and Dragons handles the concept of race is…iffy. To paraphrase Dwiz, DnD is in part a game about the fantasy of racializing others and being correct, which makes sense given that Gary Gygax famously thought that women were genetically predisposed to not like DnD. This, to put it politely, fucking sucks, especially because the simulation (not necessarily a robust one, but putting those principles into play), has persuasive power. However, it's still fun to have that extra way of getting special abilities. So what’s a gamer to do?

Solution the First: Bonuses via Backgrounds. This is obviously partly being done already, what with both mainline DnD giving skills and other special abilities via backgrounds, with Pathfinder going even further and adding attribute bonuses and feats. Having “What you did before you started murdering goblins” giving you bonuses makes sense, after all. 

Solution the Second: Modular “Homeland stuff”. This one’s maybe a bit funkier. There’s a great Owen K.C. Stephens Tweet that I can’t find because I’m not on Twitter, but in it he describes having traits assigned to nations or geographical regions rather than distinct “Races.” Say for instance, that every character has a Major and Minor homeland bonus they can get, selected from a pool. A character hoping for a dwarf-like experience could get (pulling stuff out of my butt here) a resistance to poison as their Major bonus, and the ability to see in the dark as a Minor bonus, but then say that they simply worked in the noxious coal mines of their hometown. Various regions could have Suggested Bonuses, that could then be ignored for those seeking a different kind of experience. 

This kind of thing would, in my opinion, better showcase people as a product of their environment and upbringing, which a lot of mainline dragon-games and 4X games do a somewhat poor job of doing.