Trivia
Avalon Hill
The game was partially inspired by the Avalon Hill boardgame
Civilization and later
Advanced Civilization. When
Sid Meier's version became so popular, Avalon Hill actually came out with
Advanced Civilization for the PC. Avalon Hill then sued Hasbro/MicroProse for copyright infringement. Activision got involved as they want to license the Avalon Hill version for their
Civilization: Call to Power. MicroProse then went on, with Hasbro's help, to buy out the original inventors of the Avalon Hill's version, thus negating the suit. Finally they settled out of court. Activision gets the license to make
Call to Power, MicroProse keeps the computer game name
Civilization, and Avalon Hill gets nothing.
Board game
Coming full circle from its apocryphal roots in the 1980 Hartland Trefoil / Avalon Hill boardgame
Civilization, 2002 saw the release of
Sid Meier's Civilization: the Boardgame.
Development
Dan Bunten, creator of the
M.U.L.E., wanted to follow this game up with a computer port of the Avalon Hill board game
Civilization. Unable to drum up enough support from his Ozark colleagues, he instead went on to create
Seven Cities of Gold. After leaving Electronic Arts in 1988, Bunten signs a deal with Microprose and has a choice between the Civilization port and a conversion of Milton Bradley's
Axis and Allies. Fellow Microprosian Sid Meier convinces him to tackle the latter, which becomes Bunten's
Command H.Q.. Meier, of course, goes on to make Civ.
Inspiration
Although clearly inspired in part by Avalon Hill's
Civilization boardgame,
Sid Meier's Civilization also draws very heavily upon the original conquer-the-world computer strategy game
Empire: Wargame of the Century.
Intro
The lines of text shown in the intro cinematic/animation are read from a plain text file in the game's directory, and thus can be easily modified.
References to the game
Strangely enough, but in
Sliver, a thriller movie with
Sharon Stone,
William Baldwin and
Tom Berenger, you can spot a poster on the wall to secret room of the bad guy in the movie, a close up of the front cover of
Sid Meier's Civilization game. It is hardly noticeable as it appears for a split second.
Soundtrack
An orchestral version of the game soundtrack was released on the CD-ROM (as audio tracks) of Sid Meier's CivNet in 1995.
Strategy guide
Sid Meier's Civilization was one of the first games to have a paperback strategy guide released for it:
Alan Emrich and
Johnny Wilson's
Rome on 640K a Day.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- November 1992 (Issue #100) – Overall Game of the Year
- August 1993 (Issue #109) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #1 overall in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
- March 2001 (Issue #200) - #1 in the "Top Ten Games of All Time" list (Editors' vote)
- March 2001 (Issue #200) - #7 in the "Top Ten Games of All Time" list (Readers' vote)
- Game Informer
- August 2001 (Issue 100) - #62 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
- GameStar (Germany)
- Issue 12/1999 - #1 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
- PC Gamer
- April 2000 - #11 overall in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll (the oldest game to make the list)
Information also contributed by
Adam Baratz,
Andrew Grassender,
JimmyA,
Kasey Chang,
lethal guitar,
MAT,
PCGamer77 and
Pseudo_Intellectual
