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What's Civilization?

   "In the beginning, the earth was without form and void..."; these words were the start of the introduction of the best strategy games ever: Sid Meier's Civilization.

   In 1991, an earthquake shaked the entertainment software industry with the birth of a game that, remembering the classic "Populous", allowed the player to direct the evolution of a civilization from nothing to a state of extreme poverty (Groucho Marx dixit)... or to the final victory; it came with the guarantee of a software genius like Sid Meier, who had created great games like "Railroad Tycoon" or the fantastic "Pirates!": it was Civilization. Its surprising AI, its VGA-256 graphics and its fascinating thematic made him #1 in the USA soon. Unfortunately, this little jewel was never distributed in Spain; though, there are always forms of getting foreign games and the Civilization Spanish players were many soon.

   When in 1996 Microprose published the sequel, Civilization II achieved a great worldwide success; the only fault it had was the unavailability of net gaming. This fault reduced its popularity in the time of a great WWW expansion. But the game preserved the original Civilization II spirit, with an improved AI, SVGA graphics, a better combat engine, new buildings, technologies and units and the possibility of creating "scenarios", special games which allowed to recreate historical situations, like the II World War or the expansion of the ancient Rome. Soon all the web was flooded with scenarios created by the users; any of them were fantastic or sci-fi scenarios, but the majority preferred the to remember the history... and, if possible, to change it.

   A year later, the company published (unfortunately, not in the Spanish market) an add-on with many scenarios and a game actualization: Fantastic Worlds. With this actualization, the scenario creation made a 360 degrees turn: to create new units, technologies, terrains, city improvements etc. became easier; and the add-on included a macro language that allowed to program events (for example: if somebody conquest Rome, destroy the Roman civilization; nice, uh?). From that moment, there appeared scenarios that were true artists works, like 2194 Days of War, created by Captain Nemo; or Spartacus, created by Alex Mor; or the Spanish Civil War created by Jesús Balsinde.

   Later, Microprose published the Multiplayer Gold Edition and Civilization II: Test of time, two new actualizations -in fact, they were independent games- who allowed the multiplayer game. It was really a pity that none of them have been distributed in Spain.

    Some time after publishing Civilization II, Sid Meier left the Microprose Company to found his own Software Company, Firaxis Games; with this company, he achieved a great success with another strategy game: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Now, Firaxis Games and Infogrames (which absorbed Microprose) published the new version of the saga: Sid Meier's Civilization III; they published it on October 30th 2001, and if you want to know something more about it, you can visit our Civilization III section.