NOTE: This is The Column, a regular feature on Apolyton where anyone can write about anything to do with Civilization or the gaming industry as a whole. If you feel like writing, please visit the article submission page.

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186# LAMENT OF AN OBSESSIVE GAME MODIFIER A hymn to modification 185# MOO3 AND CIV3, SUPPLIES AND TACTICS Two articles: a comparison of moo3 and civ3, and an idea on unit supplies 184# GAMES I'VE GOT BUT HAVE YET TO "GET" Sometimes things dont turn out good when you buy a game... 183# CIV2'S HEGELIAN TECH TREE Civ2 is not just another game, and LotM shows it's historical side 182# FEAR AND LOATHING IN BACH'S CATHEDRAL Bugs visits a world of wonders COLUMN ARCHIVE

I can quite happily state the fact that Chess is nothing in the least like civ.

I mean, no one has tried to paint all the squares on the board neon pink, replace the pieces with Action Man™ figures dressed in lime green leotards and given them three moves a go each.

You see, to my mind one of the greatest successes of the civ architecture is it’s immense ability to attract designers of weird and wacky mods. No other game, save perhaps the original Quake, has had the ability to practically draw out peoples’ crazy ideas, to beat us up into the sort of frenzied state wherein suddenly a scenario set within the human intestinal tract or in the first minutes after the Big Bang seems a good idea. As anyone who’s ever tried to make one will attest to, making this sort of nonsense can be extremely gratifying and creatively stimulating. How do I represent a red card situation when my football field consists of sixty by forty little isometric diamonds? How do I make sure that those earthworm units move only in tunnels?

They’re seldom as fun to play, though. I loved the Fantastic Worlds expansion but I don’t recall ever actually finishing one of the scenarios in it. Throwing oneself over the new rules and the graphics sets was immensely more enjoyable. I may wince today at my hierarchy of the animals modpack, at my heaven vs. hell scenario and my rather pitiful Druids in Africa dullfest (they’re mercifully gone in my last Hard-Drive crash), but I had incredible amounts of fun making them and testing them before throwing them on an imaginary bonfire.

What is interesting to me, most fundamentally, is why this is so much fun. What elusive aspect of Civilization II makes mod making so appealing, and more importantly, how do we bring it across to new incarnations? I’m not an expert on human psychology by any means, nor have I studied those philosophies that try to equate history with various natural processes, but as I think about it there are lots of things that would be appealing on a very basic level.

The immediate response is, of course, the flexibility that Civ2 has. It is true that it was exceptionally flexible for the time, as any of the more advanced exotic scenarios should testify. It was flexible in interesting places, too- not so much in rules as in graphics, sound, tech tree. I would say that alone should go a long way towards explaining why it’s so much fun- creating those little unit icons, finding those perfectly apt sounds, connecting the tech-tree in a hilarious way, and so on, all pulling at your creative urges. But there are many games, including most third-person shooters, incredibly more flexible than civ is, and yet dealing in what more or less amounts to endless point-and-shoot variants.

And ease of use! I mean, anyone could paint one of the little buggers. Hundreds of more or less (usually less) accomplished scenarios were created every day. That’s certain to attract your memes right there. But user base cannot really account for it all- many games are more popular to mod than civ, yet yield samey maps and uninspired real-life stuff. Not out elusive esoterica.

Another thing that makes Civ special is that the concepts it deals with are so easily transcribable onto virtually anything. I mean, you can find hundreds of concepts, from Evolution to Rock Music, that follow a pattern similar to that of the tech tree. And groupings- I mean there is so much in life, in society and in nature that boils down to taking sides in some way. Units can become species, balls in a snooker game, anything mass-produced or even singular. I’d say a lot of it rests in here- a shooter models something very specific that is in every way dissimilar to just about everything else in the world. History simulations transcribe incredibly well, though- inwards and outwards.

I’d finally say rigidity, or at least a good amount of it mixed into the flexibility, is vital. Half the fun it seems sometimes is fitting your entire unit into that tiny space, imagining ways in which to integrate the rules into your thought scenario (how in the blazes do you model someone scoring in Hockey onto the civ ruleset?), and trying to accommodate the natural limits into your scenario. Think of it like trying to design a bottle opener in a weird shape- it’s made more fun by the fact that the end product still needs to be able to open bottles. I wouldn’t mind a more flexible Civ3 editor, but it will surely have ultimate walls of its own, and that’s a good thing. We are not fully fledged game designers; let’s not kid ourselves.

I don’t profess to have the answer to my question anywhere here. Most likely it’s a mix of all of these factors and a whole lot more. I think it’s a useful discussion to have, though, ultimately; I will be sorely disappointed if Civ3 doesn’t let me do that Giant Maggot Creatures from the Bowels of the Mediaeval Fantasy World Fight the Giant Laser-Weilding Robot Killers from Outer Space scenario… ;-)