getting rid of sadness

The history of the fourth part of Civilization can begin with another change in the owner of the Civilization brand: Atari (Infrogames) sold them to 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two. The transaction amount was $22.3 million. The year was 2004.

Although, in fact, by that time development was already very actively underway, so Sid Meier and his studio Firaxis were philosophical about what was happening: the change of publisher did not greatly affect the team’s plans. Managed the project Soren Johnsonwho gained experience working on the previous part of the series.

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And it was a great choice. Johnson sincerely admired Sid Meier and his games: this alone explains the fact that a promising graduate of Stanford University, after an internship at Electronic Arts, chose a job at Firaxis, which offered him the lowest salary. Well, the young company had a lot of ambition and not a lot of money…

Maestro Sid Meier and Soren Johnson

Soren excelled in the creation of Civ III, becoming, in fact, the main assistant to Jeff Briggs, who is leading the work on the third part. It was Soren who wrote the algorithms for the behavior of artificial intelligence, and also significantly streamlined the game code and introduced into it many new functions invented by Briggs. After the game was released, Johnson carefully monitored all feedback for a year and released the required updates and patches.

But despite all the work Soren did, the code for the third Civilization remained, for the most part, the code of Alpha Centauri, the previous brainchild of Firaxis. And so, at the very beginning of the development of the next part, the team had to make an important decision: to base Civilization IV on the basis of its predecessor (that is, in fact, on the same “Alpha Centauri”) or to start everything from scratch?

Trying to reduce the time for developing a new game, some companies actively use previous developments – this is beneficial in the short term, but leads to the accumulation of “technical debt”: crutches and suboptimal solutions, or even functions, the principle of operation of which no one knows exactly. It is becoming increasingly difficult for a new specialist to understand such code, because not everyone bothers to write comments on this or that piece of code… In general, creating games from scratch has clear advantages!

Besides, it was time to move to a three-dimensional format. In 2004, Firaxis released a remake of Sid Meier's Pirates! – one of Sid Meier's first games. In the remake, many game elements were improved and, of course, the graphics were significantly redesigned: the project was transferred to the new 3D engine Gamebryo, and it sparkled with new colors. Although sometimes the ships passed through each other, it looked very impressive (for 2004).

The pirates have definitely gotten better!

As a result, it was decided to create a new “Civilization” on the same Gamebryo. And Soren Johnson enthusiastically got down to business, starting with a clean slate. At the very beginning, the transition to a three-dimensional picture caused a lot of controversy among artists: should the cells be straight or located diagonally? Or try hexes? Or maybe move from cells to territories… or very, very small cells? But squares and moves are the two pillars on which Civilization stands, so of course both of these mechanics remain in place. And the new map was wonderful. Although, assessing the success of the next part, which was not afraid to move from rectangular cells to hexes, Johnson regretted that he and his team were afraid to move to hexagons.

As for the “underside of the project,” the chosen approach made it possible not only to organize the code, but also to analyze every smallest component of “Civilization” so that not a single mechanic was included in the game simply because it was in all previous parts of the series. And, as Johnson had long dreamed of, to rid Civilization of “dullness.”

For example, from the controversial system of pollution and corruption that prevents the creation of giant empires. The fight against pollution was removed, replaced by a general health index, when it fell, cities needed more food. Corruption was replaced by a more elegant restriction – the cost of maintenance. And this was finally able to overcome the strategy of endless development! One fan, overly confident in the invincibility of this same endless expansion, even posted a video after the release of Civilization IV in which he eats a box from the game (as an admission of his wrongness).

But, of course, the innovations were not limited to the removal of old mechanics. A number of interesting solutions were proposed regarding the resource system: cells with resources began to bring more bonuses if improvements were built on them, and the accumulation of any resource gave more significant bonuses: it accelerated construction (if it was about marble or stone) or, for example , improved healthcare (if you had enough variety of foods). This approach to resources allowed cities to become more unique, as they became even more dependent on the surrounding area. Changes were also made to the landscape: deserts became truly useless, and mountains became impassable.

Having moved as far as possible from Alpha Centauri in terms of source code, the developers still took some features from it – for example, the arsenal, which first appeared in the fourth part of the series. Or civil ideas that replaced the usual forms of government and made it possible to more flexibly pave the way for gaming civilization to progress and prosperity.

But the main gameplay innovation was a full-fledged system religion, presented in previous parts only by temples and wonders of the world. Throughout the history of mankind, people have believed in something: religion arose at the dawn of civilization and has come a long way, continuing to play a significant role in the lives of modern people (albeit not all). It’s fair that in a game dedicated to the history of mankind, it should be presented… But, on the other hand, covering such a sensitive topic, it was very difficult not to offend anyone’s feelings. Options were even considered that did not use the names of real religions, but this was contrary to the spirit of “Civilization” – a game that calls a spade a spade.

In the first versions of Civilization IV there was even a military-religious victory, but during the development process they decided to abandon it: the destruction of entire cities with the help of religion slightly contradicts a number of commandments…

Even in early versions, religion was spread along trade routes, which was consistent with historical data, but gave little decision-making power to players. Therefore, the historical scheme had to be abandoned in favor of ordinary missionaries.

Another significant benefit of switching to a new engine and writing the game from scratch was a change in approach: for the first time in the history of the series, Civilization was developed as a multiplayer game from the very beginning. And, according to the developers, it was much easier than writing a multiplayer add-on for a ready-made single-player strategy (as was done for all previous parts).

However, this approach was chosen due to the change in game designer. Sid Meier himself, the father of Civilization, has said more than once that he “refuses to recognize online gaming.” He conceived and implemented Sid Meier's Civilization as a completely single-player game and was not involved in the work on CivNet, an improved version of the first Civilization with support for multiplayer mode. In one of the interviews, he even made a mistake when he said that CivNet was under Civilization II – he was so uninterested in attempts to add multiplayer to Civilization. On the other hand, it is worth noting the persistence of players who suffered from the imperfections of the proposed multiplayer game modes, but continued to eat cactus and enjoy the games.

And in the end, after a series of crutch decisions in the previous parts, the team had to do everything right. After completing each action, the computer transmitted updated data to all other clients (or to itself, in the case of a single-user party). Starting from the very first tests, the developers played against each other and honed the multiplayer in parallel with work on the main game mechanics. The result was obvious: fans of the game were finally able to enjoy a stable online mode in the first days after release. In addition to the classic games against each other, a team mode was offered in which players could join forces and achieve victory together.

An important point was the openness of game files, which made the work of modders easier. And this was also achieved by writing the game from scratch. And at the beginning of 2006, about a year after the release of the game itself, special modding tools were additionally released to make it easier to work on new content.

Separately, it is worth noting the work on the musical accompaniment: some of the melodies were written by Jeff Briggs, the creator of the music for all previous parts of Civilization, but new faces also appeared in the musical team. So, Johnson invited his former campus neighbor, Christopher Teen, to work on the main theme, who had great respect for the series and was glad to participate in the creation of the new “Civilization.”

The concept was formed quite quickly: the theme was supposed to convey a view of the Earth from space. The result was Baba Yeta (which means “Our Father” in Swahili, not “This Baba”), which became the first piece of music from a video game to be nominated for (and win!) a Grammy Award. And the composition was really gorgeous. So much so that some gamers simply left the main menu open to enjoy the music. And not only gamers – even people who are far from computer games liked the melody!

The game itself also won numerous awards: many publications named Civilization IV not only the best strategy game of 2005, but also the best online game and computer game of the year in general. And in 2007, the IGN portal put the fourth “Civu” in second place in the list of the best computer games of all time. The commercial success was also great: the game was released in the fall of 2005 (October 25 in the USA and Canada, November 4 in Europe), and by March 2006 it had sold more than a million copies. A year later, the circulation was already 3 million!

As with the previous parts, add-ons were released for Civilization IV: only two, because the era of rampant DLC churning has not yet arrived. Moreover, unlike additions to the second or third parts, DLC added not only scenarios, but new mechanics and civilizations.

So, published in 2006 Warlords brought players a system of vassalage and a new “caste” of great people – great commanders. And also six new civilizations: Zulu, Carthaginians, Celts, Koreans, Ottomans and Vikings, new leaders and wonders of the world. And, traditionally, scenarios: eight stories, some of which were designed not only for single play, but also for co-play (up to 5 players).

Well, for the faction familiar to readers, the addition returned the leader familiar from the first part – Stalin. A trifle, but nice!

Despite the inscription on the screen, Stalin returned to the game in Warlords, there is no mistake here

Second addition – Beyond the Sword (translated into Russian as “Age of Fire”) – also brought a number of new mechanics: a corporation system, random events, espionage and great spies (another class of great people). The addition brought new colors to the later stages of the game and made it possible to begin the development of civilization from any era – not just from the dawn of humanity.

New civilizations were added again: Babylonians, Portuguese, Dutch, Indians and separately the Mayans, Sumerians, Byzantines, Romans (HRE), Ethiopians and Khmers. And one of the new wonders of the world – the Apostolic Palace – even brought a new victory: religious and diplomatic. This building itself was a semblance of the UN, but it could have been built earlier, before the invention of the media.

The new scenarios of the second expansion were not only historical: players were offered to move to the “Another World” inhabited by humanoid robots, or to the Age of Ice, ruled by Malkarn, the god of winter. There were also stories about the distant future.

And in 2008 it came out Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization – a re-release of the good old Colonization by Brian Reynolds based on the fourth part of Civilization. The basic mechanics and the very essence of the game did not undergo significant changes: the game also offered to build a prosperous English, French, Spanish or Dutch colony, but, unlike the original version of the game, there were two leaders to choose from for each nation. Another difference was the ability to capture advanced weapons from enemy soldiers.

Despite the name, the game was a completely separate product that did not require the Sid Meier's Civilization IV disc. This issue put an end to both the question of whether “Colonization” should be considered part of the civilization series, and the history of the fourth part: after that, only a complete edition was released in 2009, combining all the materials on Civilization IV. And a year later, the fifth part of the series was released, which will be the subject of the next chapter of our retrospective.

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