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dkirschner's Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (PC)

[January 31, 2016 09:19:14 PM]

Fooled around long enough in Civ IV. I don't remember sinking too much time into earlier versions of the game, not like RTS games such as Starcraft or Age of Empires. I know I'm 10 years late to this one. There have been two whole new Civ games since 2005. I bought this probably like 5 years ago too and just never booted it up because I assumed it would eat my time. Well, I guess I'm not 14 anymore and Civ isn't as appealing. "Just one more turn..!" "Ok. Click. Exit." I wonder how much of it is due to just feeling old.

Anyway, I really don't have a lot to say about it. So many people have played a Civilization game before. I think I'd last played Civilization II or III, whichever one led to a couple friends of mine failing out of college. I was wondering while playing what political responses to the game were in other countries. The game is totally biased toward Western social democratic styles of economy and governance. Those are the penultimate selections on the various progression trees. What do countries like Thailand or China or Russia think of this? Turns out that another city-building game, Tropico 5, is banned in Thailand for hitting a little too close to home!

The Thai media censorship board said the game might threaten order in the country, and this after a 2014 military coup. Ironically, Tropico 5 models a humorous type of pseudo-military dictatorship (think Cuba). Apparently the Thai government didn't want anyone else getting any bright ideas from role-playing a corrupt politician. That's part of why I stopped playing Civ IV after less than 10 hours. I couldn't look past the biases in the design. I mean, I agree with the biases, but they're so clearly biases for certain institutional arrangements and against others. Sure, slavery and mercantilism and polytheism have their benefits, but the progression trees end with environmentalist economies and free religion (is that freedom *of* religion or freedom *from* religion? not sure!).

The only other city builder or 4X game on my wishlist is Crusader Kings I think. I hope it's less deterministic feeling than Civ IV. It sounds cool from reading about it, but I suppose we shall see when the price with all DLC drops!