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Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization

GDC Festival of Gaming · 225.5K views · 2017-06-07 · 1:02:15

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Overview

A 2017 GDC postmortem in which Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley tell how Civilization came together from board game design and sim game experience. They cover its development history and design decisions, including fairness and luck.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as a great account of how Civilization was made and as a source on perceived fairness in game design.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2017–2021

Topics

Game designGame history & retro gaming
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civilizationsid meiergdcpostmortemstrategy games

What people said

simonh · 2021-09 · Strong recommendation

Check out this great GDC talk by Sid and Bruce on the history of the development of the game. [VIDEO] They mention Empire as an influence, and there's a really nice modern implementation of Empire available for Windows and iOS. [LINK] [LINK]

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simonh · 2020-10 · Strong recommendation

Ordered. Funnily enough I recently came across this GDC presentation by Sid and Bruce Shelley on the development of the original Civilization[0]. Highly recommended. The influence of Empire as one of the inspirations of the game was obvious to anyone familiar with it. If you're interested there's an excellent updated implementation of Empire on the App Store[1]. I'd love to be able to get a version of Civ 2 on mobile. It's still by far my favourite iteration of Civ. Or Pirates! [0] [VIDEO] [1] [LINK]

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codetrotter · 2019-03 · Recommendation

> The anecdote about Sid Meier hard-coding a guaranteed "win on the third attempt" for a battle with a 1/3 victory probability was very interesting. You might enjoy these videos as well: [VIDEO] [LINK]

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Sources

Video by GDC Festival of Gaming, played through YouTube.

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