Sunday - April 15, 2007
From Big Man to Emperor
My favorite video game series is Civilization, and my current favorite game is Civilization IV. I'm not sure why I love the game so much: maybe it's the living history, maybe it satisfies my desire for politics, or maybe it's the value (I know of few other games that provide hundreds of hours of playability for just $40). But no matter how much I enjoy a particular game in the series, there are always things that can be improved. Mods in Civ IV make that more possible than ever without having to wait for Sid to include a feature, but I have an idea for a future Civilization game that goes beyond what could be done with a mod.
An empire doesn't really start out of a single city. It begins with a person rising to power within a city and then leading it onward. So, my game would start at the lowest level: you play as a person in a village trying to become that village's "Big Man". From there, you solidify your position as leader, grow your village, and then start taking control of nearby villages (either by culture, commerce, or force) or founding new ones as expansions of your own, forming a small country. As you move past the village stage, nearby villages merge into single cities and your empire begins to grow, entering you into the standard mode of Civilization games.
After completing the space race, you could continue the game, building a galactic empire out of planets. New technologies would allow faster travel and better colonization tools, allowing even seemingly uninhabitable worlds to join your empire. The goal would be galactic domination by one of the traditional methods, or completing the Singularity project.
I think playing through the layers of civilization would add an interesting new depth to the gam. Of course, games played through any subset of the layers should be possible, since not everyone will enjoy these new features. I may not even want to play them all the time. But on occasion, this game would provide a dramatic sweep through the rise of a civilization.