User Guide

Why did people love Civ? It is, of course, no one thing.
However, certain patterns do emerge:“If I research Gunpowder, I
can build a stronger military;”“If I capture that city, I’ll get a new
luxury;”“If I build the Pyramids, my cities will blossom;” and – of
course – “If I play just one more turn…” The turn-based game-
play is key to a series of overlapping mini-goals which usually lead
to the same result: a very late night of gaming.Thus, we knew that
the turn – as opposed to the “real-time” structure used by some
strategy games – was an essential part of the Civ formula.
Conversely, what didn’t people like about Civ? Too much
micro-management was high on the list. City riots were the first
to go. Instead of having to monitor your cities each turn to make
sure they didn’t suddenly go into disorder, we simply made angry
citizens unwilling to work. Instead of a one-time event which
punished you for not balancing out a complicated equation every
turn, angry citizens simply became a balancing factor of your civ-
ilization’s growth.The effect was the same but without the micro-
management.
Similarly, we added research and production overflow – mean-
ing that on the turn your city finishes a new building extra pro-
duction will “spill over” onto your next project. In previous ver-
sions, this overflow was wasted, which encouraged players to
bounce around their citizens each turn to prevent waste. Once
again, a simple change could maintain the old turn-based system
minus the micro-management.
We also looked at what game mechanics tripped up new play-
ers. One common example involved settlers and workers consum-
ing population – cities could be finished building the units, but
they wouldn’t pop out unless the city was the correct size. In Civ
IV, cities simply stop growing while settlers and workers are cre-
ated (with the food now turned into production). This small dif-
ference took out one more little gameplay trap for first-timers.
Next, we examined which base mechanics could be improved
or cut. Pollution, for example, was an easy one to take out – every-
one hated having to keep stacks of workers around for “whack-a-
mole” pollution cleanup in the modern age. Instead, by creating a
comprehensive health system, we could deepen the trade system
with the addition of “food” resources while presenting the player
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with a new challenge to tackle. It did put a lot of workers out of
a job, though.
Similarly, corruption and waste had never been popular, but we
had always assumed they were a necessary drag on player growth.
We decided to start from scratch, simply remove the feature and
then see how the game evolved without it. This choice led us
down some interesting and unexpected paths.
The term “ICS” is a well-known one among our Internet fan
base. It stands for “Infinite City Sprawl,” meaning that the best
strategy in Civ games had always been to build as many cities as
possible. Corruption and waste were meant to discourage city-
building by adding diminishing returns to expansion – your 20th
city would be much less productive than your 10th. In the first
version of Civ
III we turned corruption up significantly to – in
our minds – once and for all kill ICS.
We were both right and wrong; the change did put an end to
building as many cities into as tight a space as possible, but it was also
the number one complaint raised against the game. Gamers simply
didn’t like having their production taken away from them – there
was nothing fun about founding a city and then finding out that it
can only ever produce one shield per turn.
Once we removed corruption and waste (or – more accurately
– never coded them to begin with), some new possibilities
emerged. First, a revamped maintenance system could provide a
subtle resistance against building more cities being the “only best
choice.” Instead of tying maintenance to buildings – which actual-
ly penalized more developed cities as opposed to the smaller,
underdeveloped cities of a classic ICS strategy – we made mainte-
nance a flat cost per city that went up based on empire size. Because
each city might be costing you ten gold per turn, underdeveloped
ones would be a net loss to your economy. An empire with a
strong core could support a number of “colony” cities like this, but
basing your whole game around ICS would be very difficult.
However, maintenance created its own new issues. Like all
penalties, there is the danger of it becoming “unfun” – a burden to
the player that might balance the game but suck the enjoyment
out of it. To solve this problem, we harkened back to a similar
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