civilization game sourced
Sid Meier's Civilization
A turn-based 4X game in which the player guides a civilization from 4000 BC toward the space age by founding cities, researching a technology tree, building one-per-world wonders, and competing with rival civilizations by diplomacy or war.
core loop
explore with units -> found and grow cities -> allocate production and research -> unlock advances and wonders -> expand, trade, or fight rivals -> win by conquest or the space race
design notes
Meier and Shelley combined the technology tree of Francis Tresham's board game with Empire's exploration and conquest and Railroad Tycoon's idea of several interacting systems managed at once; a SimCity-style zoning layer in an early prototype was dropped. Each city works surrounding terrain tiles for food, production, and trade, a worked-tile yield model the taxonomy does not yet name (proposal worked-tile-yields), and battles resolve from unit attack and defense values (proposal stat-combat-resolution). Wonders exist once per world, so building one denies it to every rival.
relations
16 stored edgesFog of war
The map starts hidden and is revealed by exploring units; barbarians emerge from huts, unclaimed land, and the sea, and become rarer as exploration proceeds.
Tech tree
Advances are researched one at a time through a prerequisite graph adapted from Tresham's 1980 board game, from Pottery and the Wheel to Nuclear Fission and Space Flight; each unlocks units, city improvements, wonders, or governments, so research order shapes the game.
Turn structure
Turns run from 4000 BC to as late as AD 2100; each turn every city produces and every unit moves, against two to seven AI civilizations.
Citizen satisfaction
Cities track content and unhappy citizens; luxuries, temples, and wonders keep cities out of civil disorder.
Corruption leakage
Corruption removes part of each city's trade, rising with distance from the Palace and depending on government type; a Courthouse reduces it.
Policy toggles
Government forms unlocked by research change the economic and military rules of the civilization.
Procedural terrain
Random worlds are generated for each game, with an alternative Earth map.
Road networks
Settlers build roads and later railroads that speed movement between cities.
Statistical combat resolution
Combat compares the attacker's attack value with the defender's defense under terrain and fortification modifiers and a random draw, and the loser is destroyed.
Territorial control
Cities are captured by moving a military unit into them, transferring the city and its worked tiles to the conqueror.