Sid Meier’s Civilization
Show notes
Ah, Sid Meier's Civilization... It's hard to overstate just how epic and ambitious this game was when it first came out in 1991. The intro starts with the very formation of planet Earth itself. The seas split, the continents are formed, life evolves and eventually after billions of years it all culminates in you choosing one of 15 civilizations to lead into a glorious future. The year is 4,000 BC. The map is entirely shrouded in darkness. You have little more than a settler at your disposal. But what you have, is time. 6,000 years to bring greatness to your people, one turn at a time, by founding cities, inventing technologies, conquering your enemies and building great wonders. Whatever happens next is up to you. If that's not an epic premise, we don't know what is!
Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have three guests on the show who are each on for the very first time. From the club we have Mark ("slamo") and Mike ("circletheory"). Martijn also invited his cousin Mar onto the show, who first taught him the game back when they were both kids.
We also received two voice messages, one from Gergely and one from Bemoir. And Rusty sent us an email. Thanks to all, it's greatly appreciated! If you want to contribute something for the show, please e-mail us at [email protected]
https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/10/ep121.mp3[ download mp3 ] (147 mins, 168 MB)
Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.
Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!
RELEVANT LINKS:* Rusty's photo of the roadside Big Jumbuk in Australia
* Mark's tool-assisted Civ speedrun (and other stuff) can be found at tasvideos.org
* There are some great videos out there featuring Sid Meier: a 1994 "interactive interview", which judging by the way it's cut was probably segmented so viewers could pick questions at the time, a 2020 Ars Technica interview all about Civilization, and a 2017 GDC post mortem he gave together with Bruce Shelley.
* If you want more Sid, these two GDC talks he did are also well worth your time: "The Psychology of Game Design" from 2010 and "Interesting Decisions" from 2012.
* The Hall of Fame page on the Civilization wiki collects all the rankings Civ 1 could hand out at the end of a game, from Solomon the Wise at the top down to a certain Dan Quayle at the very bottom.
* We talked about Empire, the game that heavily inspired Civilization's development, back in episode 092.
* And of course we had to bring up Nuclear Gandhi, the most persistent Civilization myth there is.