There are many avenues to victory, from husbanding the arts and sciences for a cultural victory, to having other world leaders consent to a diplomatic victory, to ruthless military extermination of rivals for a domination victory. Mahatma Gandhi of India, Augustus Caesar of Rome, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Tokugawa Ieyasu of Japan, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Enrico Dandolo of Venice, among many others, have all been playable characters at various points in the series. As the game’s first iteration in 1991 put it, “a great leader to unite the quarreling tribes, to harness the power of the land, to build a legacy that will stand the test of time: a Civilization.” Cities are founded, world wonders are constructed, economies are grown, and war machines spring to life. Players assume control of a world civilization in 4000 BCE, playing as one of that civilization’s most significant leaders, and lead it over the millennia into the near future, as far as it can be reasonably imagined. While the game has developed and expanded in complexity over the decades, the essential elements have remained the same since I’ve been playing. Yet Civilization’s staying-power also sits uncomfortably with an incipient opposition from those opposed to its imperial overtones, and provides a fascinating window into the persistent, underlying colonial assumptions of modern-day society. Yet the record-breaking franchise, now in its sixth iteration, has continued to ensnare generations of PC gamers with its epic sweep, imaginative scope, and highly addictive turn-based gameplay that allows you to take an ancient empire to conquer the world-and then colonize the stars. If you were to tell the children and adults who first bought copies of legendary PC game designer Sid Meier’s Civilization in 1991 that they would still be playing some version of this classic game of imperial expansion almost thirty years later, they probably wouldn’t have believed you.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Posts will run twice a week until the second week in July. You can read our call for posts here, and the other posts in the series here, here, here, here, here, and here.

This is the newest post in our fourth week of our roundtable on science fiction and imperial history, co-edited by Marc-William Palen and Rachel Herrmann.

Imperialism 2 paul the tall