Should the
Civilization Video Games Be Fun—or Real?

It’s 1944. The world is plunged deep into war. American troops are on the verge of crossing into German territory. The war has dragged on for years. Heavy bombers and fighter planes have regularly made incursions on Berlin. Tanks, Marines, A.T. guns, and bunker-busting assault guns stand at the ready, waiting for direction from their commander.

But their commander in chief isn’t Franklin Delano Roosevelt; it’s Harriet Tubman. The Germans (technically the Prussians) are led not by Adolf Hitler but by Tecumseh. The war started way back in 1882. The Japanese, Soviets, and Brits are nowhere to be found, but the Americans have found a loyal democratic ally in Charlemagne, leader of the Qing civilization.

It’s just another day in Sid Meier’s Civilization VII.

Since 1991, players of the Civilization video game franchise have grown empires from scratch, turn by turn, from antiquity through the present (and sometimes beyond). They build and grow cities, manage international relations and trade, and direct technological development. Wonders of the world get erected, wars devastate empires, and random events cause chaos. Eventually, someone wins the game—usually through certain scientific milestones, cultural domination, or military conquest (at which point dedicated players either keep playing in that world anyway or fire up a new playthrough from scratch).

What started as a game played on large floppy disks for MS-DOS is now a 34-year-old franchise, with the latest iteration playable after a brief download to an ordinary laptop or gaming console. There have been sci-fi and colonization spinoff games and multiple attempts to adapt the concepts as a board game. The franchise sold 70 million copies by June 2024, and players have collectively spent over a billion hours in the game. Those numbers surely surged in February 2025, with the release of Civilization VII—the first main title in the franchise since Civilization VI‘s release in 2016.

The challenge for gamemakers in every iteration of the game is simple, yet ambitious: to simulate how civilizations grow, change, and react over nothing less than the entire course of recorded human history.

Some players like the game to mimic the real world, playing on a real-world map with all the civilizations starting in the right locations and all their rulers acting as they might have in reality. Others like to play as Gandhi but nuke their enemies into oblivion.

You can play however you want in Civilization. Players can play against other people or against leaders simulated by the game’s own artificial intelligence. The latest game allows for even more customization. Leaders are no longer tied to their real-world homelands. Players have three different civilizations over the course of a full playthrough, choosing their civilization’s identity as the game progresses from the Antiquity Age to the Exploration Age to the Modern Age. Benjamin Franklin might lead Rome before leading the Normans and finally leading the Americans to ultimate victory in the final age.

Throughout the course of the franchise, a tension has persisted: Is Civilization really a simulator of world history that captures how the world grows and changes, or is it just a fun way to move troops around on a map? People don’t expect the Red Dead Redemption franchise to be an accurate simulation of outlaw life, or for Grand Theft Auto to be an accurate simulation of whatever you do in Grand Theft Auto. But people do expect accuracy from sports and racing video games, and strategy games like Civilization fall closer to this end of the gaming spectrum. If players didn’t expect Civilization to react realistically to their choices, it would shatter the mirage the game offers of leading your own civilization.

So, should Civilization reflect how the world works, or should it just offer fun gameplay?

Every Government Is a Good Government?

Was Benjamin Franklin an authoritarian? No, but he could be in Civilization VII.

When the world transitions into the Modern Age, players must choose what form of government they want for the rest of the game. Faced with the choice, Franklin probably would have picked an elective republic over a bureaucratic monarchy. But regardless of what leader you’re playing as, if you want to go for a military victory, authoritarianism will make more sense, because it produces military units faster and gives them a combat boost (which is a little odd, considering how the two world wars went in terms of production and combat).

Government choices have always been around in the Civilization franchise, but later versions of the game allowed for more detail by having civilizations adopt different public policies. In Civilization VII, for example, adopting tariffs gives your government a boost in revenue at the expense of some unhappiness among the citizenry (though the games generally encourage international trade). Awkwardly, the policies available are largely disconnected from whatever type of government is in place. You can have an “authoritarian” government that nonetheless adopts the “Laissez-Faire” policy (which grants a revenue and happiness boost for importing resources) and the “Free Speech” policy (providing a food and happiness boost).

Complicating this further is the adoption of ideologies—that same authoritarian government could also have a democratic, communist, or fascist ideology with the gameplay advantages each one entails. Each ideology has its own civic tree: Democracy leads to liberalism leads to progressivism. (One hopes that last step is avoidable in the real world.)

There’s no political accountability involved. The simulated citizenry can become unhappy, but the in-game penalties are easily managed by soothing them with luxuries. The ease with which some authoritarian policies can be implemented without any consideration of backlash is a little uncomfortable. Instituting the draft, for example, makes combat units cheaper but doesn’t cause unhappiness.

Civilization is not here to say which governments are good or bad. Maybe the lack of moralizing is a good thing: Most of its players are probably well-versed in history and don’t need a video game to browbeat them with lessons about history’s worst immoralities. Context is available in the game’s encyclopedia, or “Civilopedia,” for those wanting to know more. “At times, authoritarian leaders are elected, but quickly move to invalidate or de-legitimize electoral politics in the name of order,” the entry for authoritarianism in the latest game says. “Simón Bolívar, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and others fit this model.”

For the most part, there are no bad governments in the games, and no bad leaders—just ones better suited to your civilization and your goals. A democracy is just as capable of winning the game as a fascist or communist government; it all depends on how you use it. Likewise for leaders: Genghis Khan may have been a ruthless warmonger, but a civilization led by the scientist Ada Lovelace is just as capable of winning the game, provided Khan is going for a military victory and Lovelace is going for a science win. Governments adopted later in the game as a civilization progresses through science or civics provide better boosts, but choosing a government is just a matter of the player’s discretion. Citizens might say they’re ready for a new government, but they never rise up to demand it.

There are some moral judgments involved: Democratic civilizations have better relations with other democracies and worse relations with anyone else, communist civilizations are closer with other communist civilizations, and so on. Citizens grow weary of war. Pillaging a city can hurt international relations. But the moral judgments involved are just the game’s mechanics, lines of code in an algorithm. The game doesn’t try to make you feel bad for removing all traces of that other civilization from world history—those savages had it coming, didn’t they?

Civilization VI gave players the option to adopt a “Corporate Libertarianism” government. Its Civilopedia entry says: “A corporate libertarian system would be one where political participation is done primarily in terms of corporate identities, with minimal coercion from the state in interactions between ‘persons’ in the society.” (I like the use of “would” in that sentence, implying real corporate libertarianism has never been tried.) Oddly, of the government options presented in that age, it’s the one to pick for anyone in need of a military boost. It also came with a penalty to your civilization’s scientific development, while picking communism in an earlier age would boost scientific research. That never sat very well with me. But it might make sense in Civilization, where technological development only happens in the order the player tells it to happen.

Flight Is Right?

What initially drew me to the franchise, during the Civilization III era of the early 2000s, was the allure of choosing which technologies would be best for my civilization. Should we research the wheel, or the alphabet instead? Advancing through the detailed tech tree, from basic agriculture through nuclear weaponry, has been the most fun part of the game through all five iterations I’ve played. Players must weigh long-term priorities against short-term needs. Choosing to research education would help a civilization gain a technological edge with the ability to build universities, but researching military tactics so spearmen can be upgraded to pikemen would help repel invading knights just outside the city walls.

This makes for great gameplay, but it’s largely not how science advanced for most of history. Scientists and inventors didn’t wait for their rulers to tell them what to research. Necessity is the mother of invention, not the king. Galileo’s contributions to astronomy didn’t happen because an all-powerful ruler told him to research the stars; the rulers, you may recall, were not at all pleased with his findings. What if he had been forced to misdirect his efforts into some doomed endeavor? Rulers had some influence over science, to be sure, but not in Civilization’s oversimplified point-and-click manner.

Consider how flight develops in the newest game. A civilization can only start research on flight after they’ve researched combustion (makes sense) and urbanization (why?). The player can then tell a city to direct its production toward the “transoceanic flight” project. But it wasn’t the U.K. government who pushed John Alcock and Arthur Brown into the first nonstop transatlantic flight; it was a 10,000 pound prize offered by the Daily Mail, and probably a desire for fame.

Taking away the power to direct scientific research might ruin the game, though. Directing a civilization’s scientific development from “What if we put pointy things on our sticks?” to “How do we get to that planet over there?” is a rewarding journey. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to twiddle your thumbs anxiously waiting for the Wright brothers to spontaneously take flight so that your civilization can start building biplanes.

Some versions of the game take the tech tree beyond the present reality—Civilization VI includes such future technologies as seasteads, huge flood barriers, journeys to exoplanets, and Giant Death Robots. Having all of the above in the real world would be great (with one notable exception), and building up toward these technologies from scratch in the Ancient Era is always satisfying. Maybe going beyond the present was a way to keep players engaged longer, or maybe it was about offering a vision for the future and giving players a future to think about even when they’re not playing the game.

Whatever it was, the future didn’t make the cut in Civilization VII. The game doesn’t even make it to the present. Completing the Manhattan Project ends the game with a military victory, for example, and launching the first crewed space flight earns a science victory. Giant Death Robots are nowhere to be found, though perhaps a fourth age focused on the present and future will make it into an expansion pack.

Civilization VI added a new component: a culture tree similar to the tech tree, spanning from the beginning of humanity to just beyond the present. Cultural buildings (amphitheaters, museums, and broadcast centers) and great people (writers, artists, and musicians) push civilizations through progressions known as “civics,” which vary from military training to divine right to natural history. Cultural innovations have indeed led to civic progress in the real world—but not when an all-powerful ruler told creators what to develop. Just as scientific developments often upset the established order and the ruling elites, cultural landmarks often stood out when they called for change and more liberty.

Discover a new tech or a new civic in Civilization, and a narrator will read you a relevant quote. (Leonard Nimoy narrated Civilization IV. It was awesome.) Unlock the capitalism civic in Civilization VII, and you’ll hear a certain Adam Smith line involving a butcher, brewer, and baker acting in their self-interest. But no one told Smith to go invent capitalism. He just observed how markets were working all around him in his daily life.

There’s a lot the game gets right about how the world works, and a lot that it gets wrong for the sake of gameplay. Thinking about the difference makes playing even more fun.

The Most Important Resource

Frequent players have a couple of quibbles with how the typical Civilization playthrough goes.

Usually a couple of civilizations will get an early advantage in size (perhaps due to conquest) and turn that into a scientific advantage, and then the other civilizations spend the rest of the game struggling to catch up. The early movers win by focusing on science and making their way to the stars while other civilizations are still figuring out trains—or the early movers just use superior military technology to conquer the opposition. (That takes longer, but it’s more fun.) It’s often clear halfway through the game who the victor will be, turning the game into a tedious time suck until the eventuality is confirmed. Civilization VI partially handled this problem with a system of punishing or rewarding civilizations with Dark Ages or Golden Ages.

Another problem is the game’s AI, which manages rival civilizations during single-player games, but does not necessarily aim for a specific victory condition. A human player with a coherent strategy can surpass the seemingly aimless AI civilizations.

The new game takes a more heavy-handed approach to reeling in the advantage of early growth. When the world transitions into the Exploration Age and later into the Modern Age, some of the established order is wiped clean. Most cities are downgraded into towns. The number of military units falls to a minimum. Relationships with other leaders are largely reset. Everyone starts the new tech and civic trees from the same point. Success in the prior age bestows a few advantages, but the idea is for everyone to start the sprint toward victory on equal footing.

Yet a big civilization is still a winning civilization. More land means more resources means more advantages. While in the past certain resources were required for certain military units or you were out of luck (no aluminum, no jet bombers), now critical resources just bestow a combat bonus to certain units.

To get that land, you’ll need people. The more people you have, the faster you’ll research technologies and develop civics, the faster your cities will produce buildings and military units, the more your income will grow, and the more land they’ll take up and resources they’ll claim.

That’s the most important thing that Civilization gets right, and has always gotten right through three decades and seven iterations: Human beings are the most important resource of all.

The post Should the
Civilization Video Games Be Fun—or Real? appeared first on Reason.com.

Source: https://reason.com/2025/05/10/should-the-civilization-video-games-be-fun-or-real/