Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization
GDC Festival of Gaming
AI-assisted summary of Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization — original source. Check the original for full context.
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Key ideas
- Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley developed the original Civilization in under a year with roughly $167,000 in salary and overhead costs, fitting 6,000 years of history into 640 KB of conventional DOS memory on an IBM PC. (22:34)
- Civilization originated as a real-time SimCity clone before pivoting to a turn-based model to foster an engaging 'one more turn' loop and accommodate deep mechanics like tech trees and diplomacy. (13:04)
- The design intentionally discarded historical horrors and rise-and-fall collapses after playtesters repeatedly reloaded saves, shifting the core experience into an uninterrupted 'rise and rise' fantasy. (43:36)
- Sequel design at Firaxis follows a strict 'one-third rule': one-third core foundation, one-third refined legacy systems, and one-third completely new mechanics. (59:28)
Detailed notes
## Background This classic game postmortem was presented at GDC 2017 and published by the GDC Festival of Gaming YouTube channel on June 7, 2017. According to the page description, creators Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley recount how combining Shelley's background in board game design with Meier's simulation development experience resulted in the creation of Sid Meier's Civilization, one of gaming's most influential and enduring strategy franchises.
## TL;DR In this retrospective talk, Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley break down the design philosophy, technical constraints, and iterative breakthroughs behind the original 1991 release of Sid Meier's Civilization. They discuss pivoting from a real-time SimCity clone to a turn-based system, inventing the iconic tech tree, and balancing complex macro-level historical systems within the confines of 640 KB of DOS memory. The developers also examine controversial balance choices like spearmen defeating battleships, the intentional omission of historical horrors to preserve player fun, and how physical manuals and psychological flow shaped early PC gaming.
## Atmosphere & style The session carries a warm, self-effacing, and deeply nostalgic tone, framed by two industry pioneers trading gentle humor and candid technical reflections. Meier and Shelley present an easy, collegial rapport, openly justifying design missteps like 'stacks of doom' and combat variance with pragmatic game-design logic rather than defensiveness. Listening feels like sitting in on an intimate fireside chat with elder craftsmen, blending witty anecdotes about Hunt Valley development with masterclass insights into player psychology and agency.
## Bulletin - [22:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1354s) Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley developed the original Civilization in under a year with roughly $167,000 in salary and overhead costs, fitting 6,000 years of history into 640 KB of conventional DOS memory on an IBM PC. - [13:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=784s) Civilization originated as a real-time SimCity clone before pivoting to a turn-based model to foster an engaging 'one more turn' loop and accommodate deep mechanics like tech trees and diplomacy. - [43:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2616s) The design intentionally discarded historical horrors and rise-and-fall collapses after playtesters repeatedly reloaded saves, shifting the core experience into an uninterrupted 'rise and rise' fantasy. - [59:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3568s) Sequel design at Firaxis follows a strict 'one-third rule': one-third core foundation, one-third refined legacy systems, and one-third completely new mechanics.
## Key takeaways - [02:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=176s) Civilization was conceived as an epic systemic sandbox following Railroad Tycoon, drawing mechanical inspiration from Walter Bright's Empire, Will Wright's SimCity, and Francis Tresham's board game. - [06:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=380s) The onboarding experience was structured as an inverted pyramid, starting simply with a single Settler in 4,000 BC before gradually expanding into multifaceted empire management. - [10:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=618s) The title was licensed from Avalon Hill's tabletop game of the same name, beating out alternative internal names like Call to Power, Rise of Nations, and Age of Empires. - [14:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=881s) The shift from real-time to turn-based mechanics fundamentally altered pacing, enabling 20-hour strategic depth that inspired Bruce Shelley's later real-time work on Age of Empires. - [19:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1154s) Historical research was conducted using children's library books to ensure historical leaders, concepts, and early visual assets remained instantly recognizable to a broad audience. - [19:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1154s) Mahatma Gandhi's aggressive reputation was not an intentional warmonger algorithm, but an unexpected contrast with his real-world pacifism that highlighted emergent storytelling. - [21:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1262s) Player agency was guided by the principle 'it's good to be king', establishing which tasks the player should execute directly versus what the computer should automate. - [25:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1514s) Single-round probabilistic combat favored macro-map pacing over realistic military simulation, deliberately generating high-variance outcomes like a Spearman defeating a Battleship. - [31:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1889s) The horizontal tech tree was invented to elevate scientific research to equal importance with military conquest, originally incorporating randomized discovery options. - [37:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2249s) Wonders of the World created a global, single-winner construction race that forced players to continuously monitor the technological and diplomatic progress of rival empires. - [43:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2616s) Unavoidable catastrophes from Railroad Tycoon were replaced with counterable hazards, such as building city walls against floods or combating global warming caused by excessive industrial pollution. - [40:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2453s) Dense physical documentation and historical essays lent gravitas to primitive hardware, establishing the psychological flow state that defined the game's addictive nature. - [50:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3040s) Without the ability to issue day-one internet patches across physical floppy disks, exploits like infinite city sprawl were mitigated pre-launch via distance-based corruption. - [53:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3223s) Religion was intentionally abstracted into generic happiness structures to maintain designer neutrality, ensuring the game did not dictate morality or alienate players. - [56:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3388s) Meier noted that subtle educational value—introducing concepts like GDP and historical leaders—acts as a powerful hidden driver for player engagement and retention.
## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=0s) Introduction and the 1990 Mindset
Sid Meier opens the session by welcoming the audience and introducing his collaborator, Bruce Shelley. Setting the stage, Meier takes the room back in time to 1990—an era before *Civilization* existed—to walk through the thought processes, choices, and development milestones that brought the original game to life. Reflecting with 25 years of hindsight, Meier notes that while many of their instincts turned out to be correct, others were fundamentally flawed. Still, he intends to defend both:
> “A lot of things that we did seemed to be the right thing to do, some of the things we did turned out to be the wrong thing to do, but we would like to justify even the wrong things—explain why we did them that way and what we were thinking at the time.”
Meier describes the project as audaciously ambitious. The goal was not merely to compress 6,000 years of recorded human history into a personal computer game operating within 640 KB of memory, but to accommodate every counterfactual, alternate history that could have possibly unfolded. He credits this boldness to their youth and recent track record: the duo had just shipped *Railroad Tycoon* (their first venture into god-style simulation games), were developing *Covert Action* (an ambitious attempt to build a computer-generated mystery novel), and had previously created *Sid Meier's Pirates!*, one of the industry's earliest open-world titles. Buoyed by this momentum, the shared background of both designers in historical study and tabletop wargaming made tackling the entirety of human civilization feel like an achievable next step.
- **Operating Constraints:** Compressing 6,000 years of recorded and alternate human history—from 4,000 BC to Alpha Centauri—into 640K conventional DOS memory. - **Preceding Studio Portfolio:** *Sid Meier's Pirates!* (open-world exploration), *Railroad Tycoon* (systems-driven god game), and *Covert Action* (procedurally generated narrative).
---
[02:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=176s) Inception, Prototypes, and the 5.25-Inch Floppy
Meier recalls the initial spark occurring on a train ride to New York shortly after finishing *Railroad Tycoon*. Both creators had enjoyed the god-game paradigm: handing the player a modest initial state and allowing their personal creativity to drive an emergent narrative every session. In *Railroad Tycoon*, disparate interlocking systems—rail operations, track laying, track financing, locomotive maintenance, and route scheduling—synthesized into deep, player-driven decision-making. Seeking another subject with equivalent systemic depth, world history presented itself as the ultimate canvas.
Shelley corroborates the memory and sheds light on Meier's design habits. Meier perpetually maintained half a dozen functional prototypes on his computer, constantly "noodling" through fresh mechanics. During this period, the pair played considerable amounts of Walter Bright's *Empire* (and *Empire Deluxe*). Meier assigned Shelley the exercise of drafting ten mechanics or features he would alter about *Empire*. Shelley, determined to overdeliver, returned a list of twelve. Shortly thereafter, in May of 1990, Meier dropped a 5.25-inch floppy disk onto Shelley's desk containing the very first external playable build of *Civilization*. Shelley kept that original diskette as a historical artifact, having regretted failing to preserve the initial build of *Railroad Tycoon*.
Both designers emphasize that the game drew substantial inspiration from several existing titles across digital and tabletop mediums:
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Core Influences on Sid Meier's Civilization accDescr: Diagram illustrating the board and video game influences feeding into the creation of Civilization.
subgraph Digital ["Computer Games"] E["Empire / Empire Deluxe<br/>(Turn-based exploration & conquest)"] SC["SimCity<br/>(Zoning, civic management & growth)"] RT["Railroad Tycoon<br/>(Interlocking systems & god-game scale)"] end
subgraph Tabletop ["Board Games"] TT["Francis Tresham's Civilization<br/>(Avalon Hill edition, tech trading)"] end
Civ["Sid Meier's Civilization (1991)"]
E --> Civ SC --> Civ RT --> Civ TT --> Civ ```
Addressing the overarching vision, Shelley underscores the commercial and creative advantage of choosing an epic scale:
> “When you start a project, your potential customer is everybody who has the platform that game is going to be on, but as soon as you make decisions about what that game is about, you start to shrink your potential audience.”
Meier affirms this lesson, remarking that it costs no more developer overhead to make a game epic than it does to make it small.
- **Prototyping Pipeline:** Meier frequently kept four to six ideas in code; Shelley acted as first-look critic and tester. - **The May 1990 Disk:** A single 5.25-inch floppy containing the first playable code base outside Meier's personal machine. - **Cross-Media DNA:** Acknowledged debt to Francis Tresham’s board game *Civilization* (published by Avalon Hill in the US), Will Wright's *SimCity*, and Walter Bright's *Empire*.
---
[06:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=380s) The Inverted Pyramid of Decision-Making and Tone
Faced with the staggering breadth of human history, the designers had to decide how to onboard players without overwhelming them. Their solution was to anchor the beginning to a single unit: a lone Settler in 4,000 BC tasked with choosing a single tile on which to found the initial city. Shelley terms this structural curve the "inverted pyramid of decision-making":
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Inverted Pyramid of Decision-Making accDescr: Flowchart showing how player choices expand from a single move to empire-wide management.
A["Turn 1: Single Settler<br/>(Move 1 tile or found city)"] B["Early Game: First City Founded<br/>(Pick first build, assign working tile)"] C["Mid Game: Expanding Borders<br/>(Multiple units, research paths, rival diplomacy)"] D["Late Game: Global Superpower<br/>(Interlocking economies, modern warfare, space race)"]
A --> B B --> C C --> D ```
Shelley contrasts that era with the present: in 1990, a designer had roughly 15 minutes of onboarding goodwill to capture a player's imagination, whereas modern titles must often achieve hook within two or three minutes.
Meier and Shelley also analyze the tonal balance of the original 1991 release, which mixed rigorous historical gravitas with lighthearted anachronisms. On one end stood the Civilopedia—designed to lend historical weight and educational depth so players felt validated showing the game to their parents or children. On the other end were explicit touches of levity, such as news tickers reporting gladiatorial sports results ("Lions defeat Gladiators 7–0") or Elvis Presley serving as the entertainer icon on the city view screen.
``` +------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Educational Gravitas | Deliberate Levity & Humor | +------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Comprehensive in-game Civilopedia | Anachronistic news: "Lions beat | | Detailed historical progression | Gladiators 7-0" | | Weighty decisions on governance | Elvis Presley as City Entertainer icon| | Complex technological dependencies | "We Love the King Day" celebrations | +------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+ ```
While later entries in the franchise moved away from overt slapstick, Meier notes that during original development, they were genuinely unsure whether the game could survive purely on serious academic merits, opting to keep the atmosphere inviting.
Finally, Shelley highlights the critical role of positive reinforcement mechanisms. Features like newspaper headlines, diplomatic flattery, and "We Love the King Day" parades were systematically deployed to reassure players that their reign was succeeding, easing the cognitive load of a massive, open-ended simulation. Meier agrees, concluding that clear feedback on whether the player is making good decisions remains one of the core challenges of complex strategy design.
[10:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=618s) Naming the Game and Securing the Rights from Avalon Hill
Sid Meier reflects on the psychological necessity of providing the player with steady reinforcement. In long-form games, players constantly wonder whether they have spent the last hour or two wasting their time, making it crucial to offer persistent signs of progress that communicate to the player that the game appreciates their actions. Turning to production history, Meier notes that in hindsight, it seems astonishing that the team could not initially call the project *Civilization*. Throughout development, *Civilization* served strictly as a working internal code name because Avalon Hill, an active computer game publisher at the time, already owned a board game named *Civilization* that had originally been designed in England.
Facing that legal hurdle, the team brainstormed alternatives, throwing around candidate titles like *Call to Power*, *Rise of Nations*, and *Age of Empires*—names that would ironically surface years later as major historical strategy franchises. Ultimately, Meier felt that no other title would do: “We said, you know, the only appropriate name for this game is *Civilization*.” MicroProse’s marketing department approached Avalon Hill, who happened to be withdrawing from computer game publishing at the time, and successfully negotiated a licensing agreement for the title. Meier views securing the name as a cornerstone of the game's commercial and cultural impact, comparing it to earlier titles like *Pirates!* and *Railroad Tycoon*, which instantly formed a vivid mental image in the player’s head before they even played.
- The original *Civilization* board game, designed in the United Kingdom by Francis Tresham, was licensed and published in the United States by Avalon Hill. - Meier clarifies a frequent misconception: the video game was never intended to duplicate the board game, which was confined to a specific historical era and geographic zone (the ancient Mediterranean), whereas Meier's design spanned global space and all of human history. - The iconic box art chosen for the game was not custom-commissioned by the artists; an internal marketing staffer discovered existing artwork that perfectly embodied the sweeping historical scope of the project.
[13:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=784s) From Real-Time SimCity Clone to Turn-Based Strategy
Although modern players view turn-based play as the defining core of *Civilization*, Meier reveals that the initial prototype—likely preserved on the early floppy disk retained by Bruce Shelley—ran in real time. It operated much like *SimCity*, asking players to paint economic zones, designate farmland, and sit back to observe developments as the world evolved passively on its own clock. The design only clicked into place when Meier scrapped the real-time simulation layer and switched over to turn-based mechanics. The turn-based structure gave players the deliberate pacing required to engage deeply and weigh every consequence.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Evolution of Civilization Core Loop accDescr: Diagram illustrating the shift from real-time SimCity passive zoning to turn-based forward projection mechanics.
subgraph EarlyProto["Early Prototype (SimCity Model)"] A["Real-time simulation clock"] --> B["Zoning land (e.g., Farm zones)"] B --> C["Passive observation of growth"] end
subgraph TurnBasedCiv["Turn-Based Redesign"] D["Discreet player turns"] --> E["Simultaneous long-term projects<br>(Wonders, exploration, techs)"] E --> F["Forward-looking mindset<br>('One more turn' loop)"] end
EarlyProto -->|"Redesigned for player agency"| TurnBasedCiv ```
Turn-based pacing sparked what Meier terms a forward-leaning posture, where the player's mind always races ahead of the screen. Because players juggle several overlapping horizons simultaneously—founding a distant colony, building a wonder on another continent, and researching a new technology—they remain perpetually locked in the anticipation loop that birthed the famous “one more turn” phenomenon.
- Turning the game into a turn-based system directly facilitated the deep, complex sub-systems that defined the franchise, such as diplomatic negotiation windows and the non-linear technology tree. - Prior to *Civilization*, strategy games were widely stigmatized within the broader software market as plodding, boring exercises for nerds involving cardboard chits and map grids, rather than products fit for mainstream computer gaming. - Shelley and Meier note that MicroProse internal management was initially hostile to the concept, preferring high-margin flight simulators; internal executive resistance evaporated only after *Civilization* garnered runaway critical acclaim and massive sales.
[14:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=881s) The Turn-Based vs. Real-Time Debate and *Age of Empires*
The discussion turns to Bruce Shelley’s subsequent career move to Ensemble Studios, where he co-created *Age of Empires*. Meier argues that the fundamental divergence between the two games traces back to temporal format: “In my mind the reason those games are so different is almost solely based on the fact that one is turn-based and one is real time.” Shelley agrees, noting that by the mid-1990s the strategy landscape had been completely transformed by the breakout success of titles like *Command & Conquer* and *Warcraft*. Wanting to build on what they loved about *Civilization* without outright copying it, Shelley’s team settled on a guiding pitch: “Can we do *Civilization* in real time? What would that be like?”
Shelley explains that adapting the historical concept into real time dictated a drastically condensed session length, compressing an entire campaign into a punchy thirty-to-sixty-minute competitive match, compared to the sprawling twenty-hour sessions typical of *Civilization*. Ensemble also narrowed the chronological scope, dedicating the first *Age of Empires* exclusively to antiquity, while *Age of Empires II* focused strictly on medieval knights and castles. Meier reinforces the structural boundary between the two forms, stating: “You can't play a real-time game for 20 hours... it would be too intense, and by the same token a turn-based game that lasted you know 30 minutes or so again would not really be satisfying.” Both designers celebrate how their distinct choices carved out lasting, independent niches in PC gaming.
[19:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1154s) Great Leaders, Nuclear Gandhi, and the Children's Library
Addressing the long-standing community folklore surrounding Mahatma Gandhi's aggression, Meier reflects on how the character developed into a legendary gaming meme. Meier downplays urban legends of an intentional or wildly erratic warmonger algorithm, highlighting instead the jarring contrast of the leader's historical pacifism against game mechanics: “Our theory is that Gandhi was not really programmed to be more of a warmonger than anybody else, but it was so out of character for him and kind of really illustrated that the game is not about reproducing history, but creating your own historical story.” Whenever an AI-controlled Gandhi assumed a hostile attitude or declared war, the cognitive dissonance caught players by surprise and made it memorable.
Shelley and Meier reveal that their overarching design philosophy for world leaders and historical milestones relied on broad cultural familiarity rather than academic obscurity. To achieve that accessibility, the pair conducted their foundational historical research not in dense academic archives, but in the children’s section of the public library. By sticking to elementary-level history, players immediately recognized figures like Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, allowing them to feel knowledgeable and confident right away. Interacting on an equal footing with larger-than-life historical giants gave players an intuitive sense of mastery over the fate of human civilization.
[21:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1262s) "It's Good to Be King" and the Leader Personas
Bruce Shelley and Sid Meier discuss how adopting historical rulers shaped the player's identity and core game loop. Shelley notes that their guiding byline was "it's good to be king" (a Mel Brooks reference), but adding historical figures created an intriguing psychological duality: the player acts as an all-powerful, godlike overseer of an entire civilization, yet simultaneously role-plays as a specific historic tyrant or monarch, such as Joseph Stalin or Genghis Khan. Shelley admits he had not initially thought through that dynamic, but felt it worked brilliantly.
Meier elaborates that every simulation faces a fundamental design question: what actions should the player perform manually, and what should the computer automate? Grounding every mechanic in the concept that the player is the "great leader" provided an immediate filter for these design choices, defining the exact level of abstraction. Shelley adds that their historical research relied heavily on the children's section of the library. Beyond simple readability, those books offered abundant visual reference material for artists. Because the core team was tiny, Meier personally handled the programming, design, and artwork, making those visual references essential.
- The guiding mantra “it’s good to be king” framed player agency as a monarch rather than an invisible bureaucrat. - Framing the player as a great leader resolved core interface and scope questions regarding which systemic tasks were delegated to the AI. - Research materials were sourced from library children's books specifically because clear visual illustrations could quickly inform Meier’s early pixel art.
[22:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1354s) Technical Constraints, Development Timeline, and the $167,000 Budget
Meier reflects on the sparse development environment of the project. For the vast majority of production, the entire team consisted of just Meier and Shelley, eventually expanding to around ten people near release. Their target platform was an IBM PC with 640 KB of conventional memory and standard EGA graphics featuring a rigid, unalterable 16-color palette, before eventually upgrading to VGA's 256 colors. Far from feeling crippled, Meier explains that these stark technical boundaries forced them to focus almost all their creative energy on game design, relying on players' imaginations to fill in the graphical fidelity they could not provide.
Development on *Civilization* began in early 1990, paused while Meier finished *Covert Action*, and resumed to ship in 1991, meaning the original game was developed in under a year of active work. Shelley recounts his background coming from four-color CGA games, which instilled a philosophy that gameplay had to carry the product because visuals could not impress anyone. He admits he originally fought against investing heavily in art on future projects until later witnessing how bright, outdoor visuals dramatically boosted the appeal of *Age of Empires*. When Meier asks about production expenses, Shelley reveals that a formal budget analysis he ran for their previous title, *Railroad Tycoon*, showed it had cost MicroProse just $167,000 in salaries and overhead to build. Meier notes that *Civilization* was produced under a very similar financial scope, an amount that would barely cover a single programmer's salary today.
> “I mean, we can't hire a great programmer for that kind of money, it seems like today, for one year, and Civ was similar, I think.” — Bruce Shelley
[25:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1514s) The Spearman vs. Battleship Controversy
Meier addresses one of the most famous debates in strategy gaming: whether a primitive Spearman unit should ever be able to defeat a modern Battleship. Meier points out that mathematically, combat was probabilistic: a Spearman held a defense rating of 2, while a Battleship had an attack rating of 16. Because of the random roll, an upset was statistically possible. Much like players' reaction to the aggressive Gandhi AI bug, players who suffered this extreme statistical outlier assumed it was a frequent flaw. Shelley recalls being the first person to confront Meier about this exact scenario, asking how a coastal warship shelling the land could possibly lose to an ancient ground unit rather than blowing it to smithereens.
```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: The Spearman vs Battleship Dilemma accDescr: Diagram illustrating the clash between mathematical probability and visual realism in Civilization combat. subgraph MathModel["Mathematical Design"] A["Battleship: Attack 16"] B["Spearman: Defense 2"] C["RNG Combat Resolution"] A & B --> C end subgraph Perception["Player Perception"] D["Outlier Result: Spearman Wins"] E["Player Expectation: Absolute Modern Superiority"] C --> D D -.->|"Breaks Immersion"| E end ```
Meier explains that combat remains the single subsystem most heavily overhauled across every subsequent *Civilization* title. There is an inherent design tension between acting as a monarch making continental macro decisions and being forced down into tactical micro-management:
> “There's kind of a tension between the role that you play as the king over most of your civilization and your role as far as combat is concerned.” — Sid Meier
- In the original release, combat resolved in single-round, high-variance dice rolls without hit-point buffers. - Later iterations mitigated bizarre results by adding multi-round combat, persistent hit points, and altered unit factors. - Developers frequently considered moving battles to a dedicated tactical combat screen, but repeatedly opted to keep combat on the main map to preserve pacing.
[27:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1671s) Board Game Roots: Zones of Control and Stacks of Doom
Discussing board-game influences, Meier admits that introducing "zones of control" (ZOC)—a standard mechanic borrowed from hex-and-counter military wargames—was probably the worst mechanical design choice made in the original *Civilization*. Meier had envisioned combat resembling a World War II frontline where players built defensive cordons along borders to contain adjacent empires. Instead, player behavior bypassed these expectations entirely: combat became centered around massive "stacks of doom"—huge clusters of military units grouped together moving between heavily fortified cities.
Cities naturally emerged as the primary focal points of warfare. Meier notes that while this was completely unexpected during initial design, it proved to be a blessing because city-centric combat was smoother and allowed players to concentrate mental bandwidth on diplomacy, exploration, and building wonders rather than micromanaging static lines of infantry. Meier also emphasizes their deliberate UI choice to print every unit's attack, defense, and movement factors clearly visible on the screen. The objective across all game systems was total transparency: rather than wasting brainpower trying to reverse-engineer hidden math, players could immediately grasp the system rules and focus their imagination on strategic execution. Meier acknowledges that recent *Civilization* titles, particularly through one-unit-per-tile (1UPT) rules, are still trying to recapture that original wargame vision of spread-out tactical combat.
[30:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1848s) The Spearman vs. Battleship Defense
Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley joke about the design decisions that led to infamous combat outcomes, such as a spearmaker defeating a battleship. Sid compares this logic directly to classic board games, stating: “It’s a game, we’re not trying to model reality here, it’s a game.” He had to make peace with the mechanic himself before having to justify it repeatedly to coworkers across the studio.
Bruce Shelley explains that a core part of his duty at MicroProse was serving as a human buffer for Sid against internal workplace politics and grievances. Outraged colleagues regularly marched straight to Bruce’s office demanding explanations for why ancient units could triumph over modern military hardware. Bruce jokes that he should have hung a permanent sign on his office door detailing the explanation for the spearmen versus battleships controversy just so people would stop bothering him about it.
- Bruce acted as a shield protecting Sid from company-wide complaints about gameplay mechanics. - The combat resolution was intentionally abstracted like chess rather than designed as a literal military simulation.
---
[31:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=1889s) Inventing the Tech Tree
Sid Meier reflects on the invention of the tech tree in *Civilization*, an innovation that went on to influence game design across the entire industry for over twenty-five years. Sid admits he does not remember the precise eureka moment when they conceived it. However, he recalls referencing a history book laid out as a horizontal timeline with milestones pegged to specific eras, which inspired the mechanical concept of prerequisites and sequential discovery. This approach matched their design goal of starting small and peeling back layers like an onion as players advanced.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Tech Tree Design Concept accDescr: Flow diagram showing how horizontal history timelines inspired the Civilization tech tree mechanics.
subgraph Inspiration["Historical Inspiration"] A["Horizontal History Timeline"] --> B["Epoch & Era Milestones"] end
subgraph DesignGoals["Core Game Design"] B --> C["Start Small"] C --> D["Layered Complexity: Peel the Onion"] D --> E["Elevate Science Alongside Warfare"] end
subgraph Mechanics["Player Experience"] E --> F["Sequential Tech Tree Choices"] F --> G["Game-Changing Upgrades"] end ```
Bruce enthusiastically recalls how the tech tree drove his personal playstyle, especially the rush to unlock Railroads so he could move military units anywhere across his empire in a single turn. Bruce notes that formulating tech lists involved studying historical breakthroughs—such as the stirrup, which revolutionized cavalry warfare by allowing the rider to direct the full momentum of the charging horse into a couched lance. Sid playfully interrupts to point out that the stirrup was not actually included in *Civilization* (suggesting Bruce was remembering his later work on *Age of Empires*), though both agree the core philosophy was identifying technologies that fundamentally reshaped world history.
- The tech tree elevated scientific research to equal standing alongside traditional wargame combat. - Bruce prioritized tech paths targeting Railroads for empire-wide instantaneous logistics. - The research process involved identifying pivotal human technologies from historical and educational texts.
---
[34:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2053s) Optimizers, Min-Maxers, and Emerging Playstyles
Looking back, Sid notes a sharp contrast between how the tech tree was originally conceived and how players ultimately interacted with it. Sid originally envisioned scientific research as an unpredictable, foggy journey: in the original *Civilization*, players who met all prerequisites for a breakthrough like Gunpowder were still subject to a small random chance that it would not appear as an immediate option. As Sid explains: “My thinking was, well, they didn't know that they were going to be able to, you know, invent gunpowder at this time; it was like they were finding their way through this mysterious cloud of science possibilities, and boy did we get some complaints about that.”
Players hated the uncertainty and immediately began min-maxing and calculating research paths seven or eight iterations in advance. By *Civilization II*, the interface explicitly showed pathing directly to distant leaf nodes, acknowledging the analytical min-max playstyle. Bruce shares an anecdote from a Blizzard developer who received a letter from a *StarCraft* player claiming that moving a single map element by one pixel to the north would guarantee he never lost a game again. While deterministic, pixel-perfect layouts appealed to hardcore competitive optimizers, Sid and Bruce favored procedurally generated maps and unpredictability to preserve surprise and replayability across different player personality styles.
- Original *Civ 1* design included RNG on tech availability to simulate the unpredictability of scientific discovery. - Player backlash pushed *Civilization II* and future entries to provide transparent, multi-tier tech pathing. - The procedural map generator was maintained as a core franchise pillar to prioritize varied strategic challenges over strict static optimization.
---
[37:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2249s) Wonders of the World
Sid and Bruce discuss the addition of the Wonders of the World as another classic design success. Sid remarks that history offered rich, low-hanging fruit to borrow from, whether Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Giza. Wonders served multiple psychological and gameplay functions: they introduced an aspirational race where only a single civilization could claim each unique wonder, which forced players to pay close attention to the progress of rival civilizations across the globe.
Bruce highlights the aspirational pull of being able to personally construct landmarks like the Great Wall or the Great Pyramid. While later entries in the franchise added dramatic cinematic Wonder movies to celebrate their completion, the core mechanical excitement—a tense, high-stakes global building race—was established immediately in the first title, earning an onstage high five between the two designers.
- Wonders established global, winner-take-all races between competing civilizations. - The mechanic compelled players to monitor global diplomacy and foreign production. - Familiar historical monuments provided immediate emotional and aspirational engagement.
---
[38:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2325s) The Missed Opportunity of Modding in Civ 1
Turning to their early shortcomings, Sid points out that the original *Civilization* entirely missed the opportunity for player modding and custom scenarios. He humorously confesses their early mindset: “We just didn't have the vision in those days to imagine that anyone could design anything better than we could, I guess that was probably our thinking at the time.” Modding was formally embraced in *Civilization II*, transforming the community and serving as a training ground for future game designers. Sid credits modding with sustaining player engagement across the long four- to five-year development cycles between major sequels.
Bruce jumps in to defend Sid, urging him not to beat himself up over the absence of modding tools in the original 1991 release. Bruce emphasizes the harsh realities of their original production environment: they were operating with a tiny team under strict time constraints, pre-internet distribution challenges, and constant pressure from MicroProse management walking down the hall demanding to know why Sid was wasting time on a turn-based strategy project instead of building another profitable flight simulator.
- *Civilization II* institutionalized modding, which became central to the franchise's longevity. - Player feedback on *Civ 1* revealed a strong desire among players to tweak balance and act as game designers. - *Civ 1* was developed under intense management skepticism from executives favoring MicroProse's established flight simulators.
[40:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2453s) From Scoring Goals to Defending the Net: Shipping the Game and the Legendary Manual
Reflecting on the frantic conclusion of development, Bruce Shelley praises Sid Meier’s ability to draw a line around the project when the rest of the company was overflowing with suggestions. Once early builds circulated around MicroProse, staff members constantly poured into Meier’s office with fresh concepts. Shelley compares game production to a soccer match: during the first half, the designer plays forward, relentlessly attacking and trying to score goals through a barrage of brainstorms; in the second half, the designer must switch to goalkeeper, staunchly protecting the goal line and refusing to let any new features in so the team can actually finish and ship the boxed product. Meier graciously accepts the praise, laughing that he never felt under pressure, while Shelley also tosses kudos to Brian Reynolds for later introducing modding into the franchise.
```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Game Development Soccer Metaphor accDescr: Bruce Shelley's two-phase model of game development compared to soccer positions. subgraph FirstHalf["First Half: The Forward"] A["Brainstorming"] --> B["Generate Ideas"] B --> C["Try to Score Goals"] end subgraph SecondHalf["Second Half: The Goalkeeper"] D["Defend the Net"] --> E["Reject Feature Creep"] E --> F["Ship the Boxed Game"] end FirstHalf -->|"Mid-Project Transition"| SecondHalf ```
The conversation then turns to Shelley's massive physical game manual, accompanied by a picture of a young Shelley that Meier jokes was taken merely three years ago. Meier emphasizes that the manual gave the game a profound sense of importance and gravitas, turning it into a title players felt compelled to talk about because managing an entire civilization proved they were smart and capable. Beyond rules, it provided rich historical essays and curated reading lists for players who wanted the deeper story. Shelley notes that modern games must hook players within three minutes through a seamless first-time user experience because modern audiences no longer have time to read manuals—admitting that he himself no longer reads manuals for anything. Meier points out that MicroProse had embraced this philosophy across titles like *Railroad Tycoon* and *F-15 Strike Eagle*, using dense, high-quality documentation to make primitive computer hardware feel epic and significant.
- Shelley’s soccer design maxim: “You got enough stuff in here is good to go now you're defending the goal it's going to get this game done and we're not going to try and score any more goals just trying to finish this project I think you did a good job boxing it off and taking it to the finish.” - Shelley on player onboarding: “I mean we're trained now to do it all you know like this is you take them through the first time of user experience when they don't they know how to play and it's all seamless and you got 3 minutes to make it happen.”
[43:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2616s) Designing for Player Fun: Rise and Rise, Disasters, and Global Warming
When mining history for gameplay, the designers intentionally curated elements that enhanced engagement while omitting grim or intractable historical realities such as slavery, the Black Plague, and religious wars. Shelley underscores that their core mission was commercial entertainment rather than academic instruction; if a player was inspired to visit a library afterward, that was a welcome bonus, but entertainment always came first. This philosophy directly altered Meier’s original thesis for the game. He initially intended to simulate both the rise and fall of civilizations, believing players would feel deeply rewarded by rebounding from devastating catastrophes. In playtesting, however, human psychology proved otherwise: the moment the plague struck or a collapse occurred, players immediately loaded a save file from five turns earlier to circumvent the setback entirely. As a result, the gameplay structure abandoned civilizational collapse to become the unyielding “rise and rise and rise” of civilization.
This pivot reinforced a design rule learned the hard way on *Railroad Tycoon*, where unavoidable river floods destroyed expensive rail bridges, infuriating players who were helpless to prevent it. Shelley and Meier realized that purely random catastrophes rewarded the computer rather than the human. When floods were implemented in *Civilization*, Meier ensured players could construct city walls or protective infrastructure to permanently neutralize the threat, preserving player agency. Meier also notes that *Civilization* was ahead of its time by introducing global warming mechanics as early as 1990: excessive industrial pollution caused sea levels to rise and permanently swallowed coastal cities.
- Shelley on player-centric design: “Computer was having the fun player wasn't having the fun computer was having the fun so that was one of your points too the player should have the fun not the computer not the researcher not the writer not the computer.” - Meier on civilizational collapse: “What we found happen is as soon as this plague hit or this this setback happened people would reload their game from five turns ago and and kind of try to try to avoid it so um it became the rise and rise and rise of civilization and not not the fall.” - Shelley on historical boundaries: “The idea is to entertain people not teach history I think you can learn things and we can introduce you to maybe go down the road to go to the library and read more but we we're focusing on making entertainment software.”
[45:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2758s) Demographics, Spearmen vs. Battleships, and the Audacious Opening
Meier addresses the dense demographic and statistical screens in *Civilization*, acknowledging in hindsight that the team was still figuring out what worked. The design initially included pages of granular population figures and socio-economic data intended to foster a tabletop role-playing atmosphere. In practice, players saw right through the statistical illusion. Rather than role-playing historical governors, gamers systematically optimized tech trees and evaluated tactical combat probabilities, birthing infamous game-system clashes like spearmen defeating battleships. Consequently, most of the elaborate demographic screens were discarded in subsequent sequels. What did survive were positive reinforcement feedback loops—the "attaboys"—such as the recurring ranking screens celebrating the top five cities in the world to signal to players that their empire was flourishing.
The presentation then showcases the dramatic opening cinematic, which scrolls the biblical phrase "In the beginning the world was without form and void" accompanied by a sweeping musical score composed by Jeff Briggs in the brassy, open style of Aaron Copland's fanfares. Meier and Shelley reflect on the pure audacity required to open a computer game on such a grandiose scale. The cinematic was engineered to tell players immediately that this was not a conventional arcade distraction; it was a profound simulation that handed them the reins of human destiny at a critical juncture in world history.
- Meier on player optimization over role-playing: “Nobody was fooled this is a game and and I think people more and more looked at it as a game and as they kind of optimized their way through the tech tree and and analyzed uh Spearman versus battleships it kind of um was not seen really as much of a role playing experience which is part of what we were trying to do.” - Meier on the game's bold opening tone: “I think that we succeeded in kind of giving you the idea that this experience was going to be different from what was happening in other games and in in kind of some important and significant way that this game kind of told you something about how the world worked and let you kind of take over at this very a crucial point in the history of the world and and tell your own story.”
[48:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=2916s) Hunt Valley Conviction, the Flow State, and Floppy Disk Logistics
Shelley and Meier contrast their personal states of mind while making the game inside MicroProse's offices in Hunt Valley, Maryland, just north of Baltimore. Shelley remembers being struck by an overwhelming, almost secret certainty that their small studio was building something that would shake the entire gaming landscape. His passion was so intense that he went home and told his girlfriend (now his wife) that if he had independent wealth, he would do the job every day for free. Meier admits he was far more apprehensive; he loved building it, but worried the concept was too weird, complicated, or "out there" for the market. Meier only felt reassured when he watched testers sit down and become utterly lost in the game. Shelley identifies this psychological phenomenon as the "flow state," where self-consciousness fades and players lose all track of time—the ultimate hallmark of game design success.
Turning to practical production realities, Meier notes the sheer logistical weight of shipping a game of that magnitude in 1991: it arrived on eight separate 5.25-inch floppy disks, meaning players frequently spent upwards of half an hour just swapping disks to install it onto their hard drives. Meier also admits that formal quality assurance was primitive at the time. Beyond the exhaustive play sessions conducted personally by Meier and Shelley, the manual credits only about five dedicated software testers. Rigorous, industrial-scale bug testing protocols had simply not yet been established in the early 1990s PC gaming industry.
- Shelley on the certainty of the game's impact: “At some point I realized the whole world did not know the gaming community did not know that in this little town Hunt Valley Maryland North Baltimore we were making a game was going to rock the world and I just felt really strongly about this game is going to be great it's going to have incredible you know success people are going to love playing game.” - Shelley on his passion for the project: “I walked down I told my girlfriend is now my wife I said you know if I could find a job make a living I would do what I'm doing every day for free cuz this is so much fun this is so cool what we're making is so important.” - Meier on his creative hesitation: “I enjoyed making the game but I felt it was a bit out there and um uh so I I was very gra felt very gratified when we started to get some positive response but I I definitely was up in the air as to whether we had kind of gone too far uh or or this was going to work.” - Shelley on psychological flow: “Psychologist call creating flow you get into a flow pattern psychologically and you just time you forget about the P of time and I and I knew that was happening to me I could see it happen to the other people playing the game and I knew that that's that's the stuff that's the real thing if you can do that then you've achieved something really successful.” - Physical distribution specs: Shipped on eight 5.25-inch floppy disks, requiring roughly 30 minutes of manual disk swapping to install. - Testing team size: Supported by roughly five formal testers in addition to Meier and Shelley.
[50:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3040s) Balancing Exploits, Chariots, and Wrapping the Presentation
While the game shipped in a fundamentally solid state, Meier notes that there were two notable exploits—the sort of things that players today would call exploits rather than hard bugs. The first was infinite city sprawl: players quickly realized that simply spamming as many cities as possible would grease their path to victory, which compelled the team to invent and implement the mechanic of corruption to counteract uncontrolled expansion. The second issue was an overlooked military imbalance: the Chariot unit was absurdly overpowered relative to its low build cost, boasting a combat stat line of 4-1-2 (attack, defense, movement), which let players easily steamroll the entire globe. Changing its attack value to a 3-1-2 completely restored balance, demonstrating what Meier describes as "the power of one number."
Because the game shipped on physical floppy disks, the luxury of modern patching did not exist. As Meier reflects on the development constraints of the era:
> “We had no option of course for a day one patch or any of the tools that we have today to update things, so few things we missed at the time, but overall was pretty solid.”
Wrapping up the prepared slides, Meier and Shelley invite the audience to ask questions about the game's design, its development process, or even their personal lives.
- **City spam exploit:** Balanced late in development by introducing distance-based city corruption. - **The Chariot problem:** A 4-1-2 stat line let players overrun the map; nerfing attack from 4 down to 3 resolved the issue entirely. - **No post-launch fixes:** Lack of internet patching required tuning numbers as accurately as possible prior to retail disk duplication.
---
[52:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3125s) Q&A: Civilization Choices, Recognizable Leaders, and Changing Eras
A fan who opens by thanking the creators for taking a good chunk of his life—having logged roughly 14,000 hours in *Civilization* across 20 years—asks how the designers selected the original lineup of nations. Meier explains that their primary design goal was to pick instantly recognizable historical figures while giving each civilization unique personalities and special traits so that every playthrough encouraged varied strategies. Looking back, Meier observes that modern sensitivities make some of their earliest choices impossible today, remarking:
> “I think that looking back, naming Chairman Mao as the leader of the Chinese, we could not pull that off today; there's a number of things we did there that actually, you know, the world has changed and we can't do anymore.”
Shelley adds that his role included historical research, and when tasked with assembling lists of candidate nations and heads of state, he drew heavily from major historical empires—predominantly Western civilization, but intentionally broadened to include major world powers such as India.
---
[53:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3223s) Q&A: Handling Religion Without Imposing Designer Morality
Mateusz Pilski, an indie developer from Ice Code Games working on a title about competing European cults, asks how the *Civilization* designers navigated the sensitive topic of religion when employing it as a mechanism for global domination. Meier emphasizes that religion has always been approached with extreme caution. In the original 1991 game, religion was abstracted simply into happiness-generating structures like temples and cathedrals. Although later installments expanded upon theological combat and spreading dogma, Meier explains that the franchise steadfastly avoids presenting any single faith as superior to another.
For Meier, this neutrality stems directly from a core philosophy of game design:
> “Whenever the designer kind of steps to the front and says this is how you should play or this is what's right or wrong, it takes the agency away from the player and then that's kind of the designer having the fun as opposed to the player having the fun.”
Rather than lecturing, *Civilization* leaves philosophical choices to the player—whether that means funding a massive military, pursuing cultural enlightenment, or striving for global harmony.
---
[55:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3337s) Q&A: The End-Game Map Replay Feature
An audience member credits *Civilization* with instilling his love of history and asks why the animated world-map replay seen at the end of the original title—which mapped out empire expansions and borders over time—gradually disappeared or received less focus in subsequent franchise sequels. Meier jokes that the attendee should check out Ed Beach’s upcoming talk in half an hour. Admitting he does not have a definitive answer for why later games de-emphasized it, Meier recalls that getting the animated replay to run inside the harsh memory limits of *Civ I* was a genuine technical achievement intended to let players vividly relive their journey, and he promises to make a personal note to reconsider its prominence.
---
[56:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3388s) Q&A: Educational Value, Learning Systems, and "Civil War" Mechanics
Salman from Google, who grew up playing every release from *Civ I* through *Civ VI*, recounts how the first game's dense informational pop-ups and built-in encyclopedia helped him convince his father to buy sequels under the banner of "edutainment." He credits *Civilization* with teaching him concepts like gross domestic product (GDP), conscription, and international figures, but feels later entries tucked this rich history behind passive civilopedia tabs to emphasize streamlined competitive play. He asks whether the franchise could lean back into its educational roots and revive forgotten sandbox mechanics, such as triggering an internal civil war by capturing an enemy's capital city.
Meier humorously agrees that "four years is a great age to start playing *Civilization*," and acknowledges the tension between the hardcore forum audience demanding sleek, competitive strategy systems and players drawn to historical discovery. Although Meier notes that game developers often treat "education" as a dirty word in commercial entertainment, he argues that the thrill of discovery is vital:
> “We think learning actually is an important part of the game: that the sense that you get playing that you now know a little more, whether it's about playing the game or about history or about leaders or GDP, I think that learning is kind of a secret aspect of the game that brings you back to learn more, to kind of feel better about yourself.”
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[59:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3568s) Q&A: Managing Complexity and the "One-Third" Rule
In response to a question about how the studio determines when to introduce or discard gameplay systems between iterations, Meier outlines Firaxis's core design doctrine. To prevent feature creep from overwhelming players, the design team operates on an equilibrium: whenever a brand-new sub-system is added, an existing mechanism of comparable complexity is removed or trimmed down to maintain an approachable mental load.
```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Firaxis One-Third Rule of Game Design accDescr: Three pillars showing how Firaxis balances sequels between core legacy mechanics, improved systems, and fresh innovations. subgraph FiraxisRule["The 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 Sequels Rule"] A["1/3 Core Foundations<br/>(Turn-based play, cities, units, wonders)"] B["1/3 Iterative Improvements<br/>(Refining religion, combat, espionage)"] C["1/3 Fresh Innovation<br/>(Brand-new mechanics never seen before)"] end ```
Meier details the studio's governing formula for sequels:
> “We also have this rule at Firaxis which we call the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 rule, which is kind of one-third of the game it's core—it's the way Civ works: it's turn-based, it's going to have cities, it's going to have units, it's going to have wonders, it's going to have these pieces; another third is taking ideas that we experimented with before and kind of taking what we learned, whether it's a religion system or espionage system or a way of doing combat, and making that better; and then another third is new things, things that we haven't put in the game before.”
This exact ratio guarantees that each iteration feels recognizably like *Civilization* while providing veteran players with novel challenges.
---
[01:00:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3643s) Q&A: Influence of the 1980 Board Game
Adrian Troy from Zoox asks whether Meier and Shelley were influenced by the original 1980 Francis Tresham board game *Civilization*, which had famously popularized concept trees and advancement tracks. Meier begins addressing the question by explaining the licensing history, noting the curious cyclical relationship where an original board game inspired the title rights for the computer game, which years later circled back around into brand-new board game adaptations based directly on Meier's digital design.
[01:01:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3670s) Board Game Roots, Social Play, and Closing Remarks
Reflecting on the ongoing relationship between digital games and physical tabletop design, Sid Meier emphasizes how deeply connected the two mediums remain. He points out that the original inspiration for *Civilization* grew directly out of their shared background in tabletop wargaming, creating a natural creative synergy between board games and computer simulations. While computer games excel at automated rule management and immersive solo exploration, board games retain distinct advantages that digital formats do not always reproduce as easily. As Sid Meier explains: “And I think one of the charms of the board game is more the multiplayer aspect, you know, playing together with friends and the social component which you don't always get playing a computer game, so they each have their strengths and I think they can reinforce each other.”
As the question-and-answer session winds down, Meier spots the cue from event staff signaling that time has officially run out. He brings the postmortem to a close by expressing his sincere gratitude to the audience for attending the session and for sustaining the franchise over the decades, saying, “Thank you very much for coming, thank you for supporting Civ.” Amid enthusiastic applause from the crowd, he offers a special note of appreciation to his longtime collaborator, adding, “Thanks especially to Bruce for coming. Enjoy.”
- The initial inspiration for *Civilization* drew extensively from the designers' past experience and background in traditional wargaming. - Tabletop board games offer a uniquely compelling social and multiplayer experience of gathering with friends around a table, offering strengths that complement rather than compete with computer games.
## Notable quotes > [02:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=176s) When you start a project, your potential customer is everybody who has the platform that game is going to be on, but as soon as you make decisions about what that game is about, you start to shrink your potential audience. — Bruce Shelley
> [14:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=881s) You can't play a real-time game for 20 hours... it would be too intense, and by the same token a turn-based game that lasted you know 30 minutes or so again would not really be satisfying. — Sid Meier
## Mentioned Aaron Copland, Adrian Troy, Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, Avalon Hill, Blizzard Entertainment, Brian Reynolds, Bruce Shelley, Call to Power, Civilization, Civilization II, Civilization VI, Command & Conquer, Covert Action, Ed Beach, Elvis Presley, Empire, Empire Deluxe, F-15 Strike Eagle, Firaxis Games, Francis Tresham, GDC, Genghis Khan, Google, Ice Code Games, Jeff Briggs, Joseph Stalin, Julius Caesar, Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Zedong, Mateusz Pilski, MicroProse, Railroad Tycoon, Rise of Nations, Sid Meier, Sid Meier's Pirates!, SimCity, StarCraft, Walter Bright, Warcraft, Will Wright, Zoox
## Video description In this 2017 GDC classic game postmortem, Civilization creators Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley tell the story of how Shelley's background in board game design and Meier's history of sim game development blended together perfectly to create what is perhaps the biggest and longest-running strategy game franchise in the world.
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[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts)