Tyler Hillis

My explorers finally unlocked the ability to sail out into the deep ocean. As they ventured into new frontiers, my civilization of Arabia had found itself sandwiched between three major figures — Cleopatra, Amanitore, and Gandhi — on the Sinai Peninsula. There was no more room to expand and the resources I had scooped up weren’t cutting it.

I received a notification that my explorer had met a new City-State. My view of the game panned over to the location to show me where in the world it was. The industry-buffing City-State of Toronto itself was nice, but what surrounded it excited me more. Or, to be more accurate, what didn’t surround it. Other civilizations. The land was free, luscious, and untapped.

So the cogs in my head began to turn. My pupils dilated. My mouth salivated. All those resources, all that space. Completely unclaimed. A brand. New. World.

And then I quit the game and sat back in my chair, a bit ashamed for how sexy colonizing the Americas had been.

A background on the Civilization video game series

Civilization is a series of video games that has come to define the 4X-strategy genre. It’s essentially a much longer and more complex version of the board-game classic RISK. The main difference being where the only way to win in RISK is to overwhelm your opponent with military might, in Civ this is just one of the many ways to claim victory. Along with a Military win, you can also be the first nation to venture into space with a Science victory, or influence all of art and entertainment across the world with a Cultural victory, or — as I chose to do on my latest session — establish a religion and spread it to all other nations (much like a virus) to achieve a Religious victory.

But these are the end goals of a 500 turn game (about 20 hours of play). Before it even begins, you need to pick which civilization to represent. These civilizations are distilled, broad-stroke versions of the greatest civilizations in history. Their unique abilities, buildings, and units all reflect their history and will help to achieve one of the victories listed above.

For example, if I wanted to go for that RISK-like win and destroy every other civilization on the map, I may want to choose Alexander The Great of Macedon, whose citizens don’t get penalties for extended periods of war. Or, if I wanted to quickly establish a steady supply of gold and food in order to grow quickly, I may choose Cleopatra of Egypt, who gets hefty bonuses when trading with other nations.

Saladin the Sikh

I chose Saladin of Arabia as my civilization for a variety of religious abilities, and also for the fact that I was not familiar with Saladin himself nor Arabian culture (in the classical sense). One of the aspects about this series that I enjoy most is the reverence it has for history, but also the freedom it gives itself to play with history. If you wanted to, you could choose to play as Teddy Roosevelt from the USA, become the founder of Buddhism, all while being geographically located somewhere in the arctic circle. History inspires the game, but does not direct it.

After selecting Saladin with a religious game-plan in mind, I came to an option I could set before playing: The map style. On almost all other games of Civ I have played, I went with the default “random continent” map. This automatically generates land masses and plops each nation down on it randomly. But this time I saw the option for “Start in actual location on real world map.” This was pretty self explanatory, and sounded cool, so I selected it. And the game began.

Land control

The first series of turns in a game of Civ are a mad-dash of planting cities and generating settlers to plant more cities. You want to find natural resources and lay claim to them, all while expanding the amount of land under your control.

I found myself starting side-by-side with Cleopatra of Egypt in what is modern-day Cairo. Before she had a chance to act, I planted my first city to lay claim to the Nile Delta area (pulling more on my historic knowledge of the area and its resources, rather than what I knew the game would provide me). She moved over to northwestern Africa and started there. South of me, Amanitore of Nubia had set up camp. Once I had more settlers, I decided to establish control of the Sinai Peninsula and begin moving into the middle-east.

Unfortunately, there were a few City-States (independent groups not associated with a civilization) that blocked my route. Instead I sat tight and began work on building my religion. I established the Sikh faith, which took a series of turns, after which I had a land problem. Beyond the City-States where I had intended to grow, Gandhi of India had moved in. I was now boxed in, forced to make do with my four cities occupying the Sinai Peninsula.

Ideological War

The game continues on. I am focused on building Holy Sites, recruiting Missionaries and Apostles, and converting everything nearby to Sikhism. I had a little bit of a theological war with Nubia after they founded Shintoism, but I soon eradicated their blasphemy and focused on controlling Africa. All the while, borders are steadily expanding up until they butt up against one another, locking them in place.

My biggest opponent in the religious race was turning out to be Gandhi and his Hinduism. While I was focused on Africa, he had spread and controlled all of Asia and Australia. And while we were mortal ideological enemies, we had both decided to become Allies. This was due mostly to the fact that neither of us had built up any sort of army to defend against the more domination-inclined civilizations. So our combined forces could help if anyone were to attack (although if Gandhi ever called for aid, I planned to never show).

I was in a decent second place for the religious win. Hinduism was ahead, but I could catch up if I was smart. The biggest hurdle in my way had turned out to be space and growth. The reason there is a mad-dash in the beginning of the game to claim resources is because controlling more resources increases the rate at which your civilization grows. Which translates to building construction, technology research, and unit recruitment taking less turns the more advanced your civilization is.

The first hit

Given that the land area I controlled was relatively small, and was made up of mostly desert (not much in the way of resources in the early parts of the game) I had to figure out a way to expand. The first time I dipped my toe into the sea of colonization was when I noticed that the island of Madagascar was completely unclaimed. It wouldn’t give me an enormous amount of overall land, it did have useful resources that my Sinai home did not.  I sent a settler down, established a city, and began plundering the natural land for my personal gain. And it felt great.

Right away, I noticed numerous benefits from the small expansion. It was the first small hit of an intoxicating drug. And while it made things good for a while, I soon got an itch to make things better.

So we arrive back at my opener. I am locked between three other civilizations, one of which being my prime competition while also being my only Ally. I have spread the Sikh faith to all of Africa and am setting my eyes on Europe for the next area to influence. But Hinduism is growing at an alarming rate. It could run away with the victory if I’m not careful. I need an ace up my sleeve. Something to give me an edge on Gandhi.

When I moved over to the new land mass my explorer had found, it was beautiful. I could see a huge amount of resources up for the taking. It would also allow me space to grow a new foundation from which Sikhism could spread. I just had to work around those pesky native City-States (which I could integrate eventually if they proved to be a problem). All these plans were quick to formulate in my head. Expansion could be incredibly useful in a game of Civ, but could also bring you to ruin if you stretch your control too thin. It would be a tricky maneuver, but it could be that small advantage I was looking for.

Games as self-directed education

So I did close the game and sit back in my chair. That bit of shame lingered inside of me. With the game off, I reflected on how crazy I sounded, looking at the Americas with the eyes of a colonizer. Only worried about the resources I could plunder and the power it could potentially give me. And while that disturbed me to some degree, it also made me laugh. This is a video game, after all. The situation I found myself in was a goofy scenario of caricatured civilizations with incredibly simple goals in mind.

Sure, I could stop playing and attempt to reconcile with the ancestral exploitative behavior that had bubbled up inside of me. Or, I could reflect on what it had taught me about the very real allure that colonization was sure to have back when the world was still developing. And while my scenario was goofy, it taught me some of the complexities that fueled those decisions (even if mine were distilled into game play mechanics).

Video games can teach us real lessons through artificial interactivity. I did no harm to anyone for wanting to colonize America in a game of Civ, but I taught myself something new. I don’t think the developers Firaxis had this exact lesson in mind when making the game, but the mechanics produced allowed me to create and learn from the unique situation on my own.

So I am going to turn my game of Civ back on, colonize America, and hopefully overwhelm Hinduism to win. Seems like a the reasonable thing to do, and maybe I will learn something else while doing so.