Sunday 28 October 2001

Pic of the day: I don't know if those are almond trees blossoming or what, but I know this is likely to be one of the last screenshots from Civ2 here. (With the possible exception of the Mars scenario..)

Civilizations

2 more days till the release of Civilization III, one of the most desired games in history. I don't expect it to be available here in Norway the next day, but quite possibly within the month. So I've been reading up on the new game, playing Civilization II with the bittersweet feeling of goodbye, and reflecting on the strangeness of human history. It is indeed a strange thing, is it not? But first things first.

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Sid Meier's Civilization was based on the board game of the same name, but with some significant improvements. Like so many other games from MPS labs, it contained a random terrain generator. So you could play on new worlds, capturing the ignorance of a new civilization that had no idea of land and sea beyond its own meager exploration. The game could be played over and over again, always different.

Civilization II was a much more complex game. There were new units, new technologies, new wonders ... more of everything. It can be hard to get into if you have not played the simpler original Civ. And Civ3 looks to be at least as complex. But the complexity is at least to some extent logical. It seems that most changes to the gameplay are in the direction of more realism. This is also what many of us have wanted.

For instance, you will now need iron in order to make units that wear iron armor or iron weapons. Until the necessary technology is researched, you will not know where the iron ore is. And if it is far from your cities, you will have to establish a new city nearby. Then you need to build a network of roads from the city with the iron to the other cities that you want to build iron-based units. Later you will have to do the same for other resources, such as rubber and aluminium. If there is no such resource within your territory, you will have to trade for it.

I like this touch. It gives a crude approximation to one of the basic engines of global politics. The fight for control of essential resources has been important in many wars. Indeed, during the epoch of imperialism this was a major motivation of the great powers. They would fight bitter wars over resources, both at home and in the colonies. Only after World War II came a major shift in thinking, where trade replaced landgrab as the dominant way to get resources. The current European Union started as a coal and steel union, whose core was the need to keep France and Germany from fighting over the resource rich area that borders the two countries. In this, I think it has succeeded quite well!

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Another new feature is the concept of culture. Certain city improvements, such as libraries and temples, generate culture points. These are cumulative, so the longer the building stands, the more potent it is. Over time, a city is steeped in culture, and will passively resist a military superior civilization. If you conquer a civilized city, the populace will not work for you until your civilization is outshining the old one. You will have to build new culture building and give these time to work. In the meantime, a strong military presence is needed to keep them from rejoining their old civilization.

In actual history, it often happened that a barbarian invader was absorbed into a higher culture. This happened again and again in China, for instance. In Europe, the Roman civilization romanized Western Europe, but it never fully converted the Hellenized areas in the inner Mediterranean. The eastern Roman empire was in many ways more Greek than Roman. Conversely, the Germanic tribes that sacked and conquered the western part of the Roman empire became themselves absorbed in its culture. France, for instance, is named for the Frankish tribes, a Germanic people that conquered the romanized Gaul (Gallia). Soon they had taken on the language, religion and traditions of the romanized people they conquered. Also other Germanic warrior tribes, such as the infamous Vandals, disappeared almost without a trace. One trace is the name Andalucia in Spain. (The V in Vandal is lost over time.) Much of the tribe crossed the Gibraltar strait and disappeared into northern Africa. They never made any lasting impression.

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One feature from Civ2 which is gone is the government type of Fundamentalism. I agree that it was a bit too good to be true, though I think it could have been powered down rather than deleted. Fundamentalism rush was a favorite strategy of players that wanted to win by conquering the world rather than building space ships. Fundamentalism had no corruption, no social unrest, religious structures gave tithes instead of costing maintenance, and up to 10 military units could be kept without maintenance costs. Unlimited, in the case of the special "fanatics" unit. To top it all, you got a bonus to diplomatic relations, because people expected no better from you. The cost of this was that all research was at half speed. If you had the Great Library, you did not need research - you got it for free. Otherwise, you could always steal it with spies.

In real life, I think it is now clear that fundamentalism does not give a bonus to diplomacy. Other changes, if they would have kept a more realistic fundamentalism, would include an economic model on the level of despotism, with significantly reduced production and trade. And far from being devoid of social unrest, you would have needed to fortify a number of extra military units in all of your cities. This would further soak up your production capacity. With these changes, I think fundamentalism should have been kept as a viable model. It certainly has not disappeared from the real world.

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These days, changes are so rapid that we take them for granted. During much of human history, progress was not an obvious thing. There were times when nothing seemed to change. The son took over the farm or the trade of his father, and kept doing what his father and grandfather had always done. His sons would do it again after him, and so on, an endless chain of life. Then this stability was broken by wars. Some died, and one ruler was perhaps changed for another. And then things returned to normal. Those who survived, bred and filled the old niches.

When we look back, we see the seeds of change sown in the simple libraries of temples and monasteries, where ideas were gathered. We see them spread by wars and by trade, mixed, and giving rise to new ideas. Their wandering was often long and convoluted. The writings of Aristotle and other Greek thinkers, while far from perfect, were essential to set off the Renaissance, ending the Middle Ages and ushering in the time of change which has accelerated ever since. But these thoughts were largely brought to Europe by the Muslims, who had conserved them while the Christian world had forgotten them as heathen legends. Other inventions, such as the compass and gunpowder and the printing press, were made in China but made much greater success when brought to Europe.

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Apart from being addictively fun, playing Civilization can also remind us that history is not an obvious thing. Even in this world, it could have been very different. Actually, we have no idea how different it could have been. There may be inventions that never were made. As I am fond of saying, what if apes had been tamed? How would our society have been today, if apes had been tamed around the same time as the dog, and carefully bred for manual labor?

Or what if AIDS had spread during the early days of colonialism? It could easily have happened. The corresponding simian virus has been around for a long long time, and there is no reason to believe that its spread to humans required high technology. The modern world that we know might never have come to pass. And we would not be here to think about it. Food for thought indeed.