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.

NOTE 2: This article is one chapter of the 96-page book The Chronicles of Civilization which is part of the Civilization Chronicles package that was released late October 2006 in North America. Thanks to 2K Games and Firaxis for providing it.

Continued from PART 1

If Succession Games are modeled after rotating dictators, Democracy Games intend to model the chaotic politics of a modern democracy. These games are often played by over a hundred individuals, voting on various important issues and electing representatives to make the little decisions. Both single-player and multi-player Democracy Games have been run – with the latter version being conducted by teams running their little governments in closed, secretive forums. Rumors fly that some may have even abandoned “democracy” altogether!

These democracy games are very popular across many sites. In fact, a Civ III Inter-Site Democracy Game (ISDG) was begun in early 2003, with a United Nations forum hosted by 1BigCommunity. The teams included Apolyton, CivFanatics, Creative Design Group, Gamecatcher Alliance, Civilization Gaming Network, the French and German fan sites, and even Firaxis itself. We, of course, were eliminated first, thanks to the treacherous Germans (no hard feelings though). A 14-team Civ IV ISDG run by Evolution Games has recently begun which will start with two games of seven teams, with the top three groups advancing to a final match.

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#227 ONE CIV, MANY WORLDS (PT. 1) Firaxis designer Soren Johnson discusses all the various aspects of the online Civilization community. #226 TREATISE ON HURRYING (PT. 2) Being in a hurry can have its vantages on planet Chiron, so Maniac starts guiding you down this path in SMAC. #226 TREATISE ON HURRYING (PT. 1) Being in a hurry can have its vantages on planet Chiron, so Maniac starts guiding you down this path in SMAC.

These games are conducted via play-by-email, the preferred method for epic multi-player games. Apolyton has a lively forum filled with “tracking threads” for these games, helping them stay organized as well as giving outsiders a peek into the proceedings. One site, Duel Zone, took these threads one step further by providing players with their own sub-forums to chronicle their games, often going into great detail for the benefit of “lurkers.”

With Civ IV, we introduced a new format for epic multi-player – the PitBoss (meaning Persistent Turn-Based Server). Basically, an administrator can run an application controlling the game on his or her own server to which the players can connect at any time to make their moves. E-mailing saves back and forth is no longer necessary – and now neither is tracking threads thanks to a user-created site called CivStats. This site automatically tracks PitBoss games so that all players can view the game’s state, who has taken their moves, what turn it is, and so on. Some of the Democracy games, such as Evolution Game’s RealPolitik series, have moved over to the PitBoss format.

Modding has been an important part of the community ever since Civ II introduced reading game data from basic text files – as well as the flexible events system key to many of the best scenarios. Civ III saw a number of epic-game mods, such as Isak and Kal-El’s Double your Pleasure/Rise and Rule (with more techs, more units, more everything), Rhye’s Rhye’s of Civilization (which improved performance and polish), and Thamis’s Ancient Mediterranean Mod (focusing on early world history).

Early on in the development of Civ IV, we decided to make the game as open to modders as possible – trying not to hide anything “behind the wall” of the executable application. Map and scenario data would be saved in a simple text format, game data would be maintained in standard xml files, map scripts, events, and interface code would be handled by the Python scripting language, and game C++ code would be publicly released so that modders could create their own algorithms by compiling custom DLL’s.

The results are just beginning to appear all over the Net. CivFanatics hosts the most popular forums for user-created content, encompassing everything from maps, scenarios, and scripts to new unit, terrain, and city art to alternate interfaces, total conversions, and AI improvements.

One popular early mod was ColdFever’s BlueMarble terrain set, which made the ground appear more like a satellite image of the planet. Map design was also an area of early interest, spawning SmartMap (a flexible map script taking advantage of the map generator’s dynamic options), MapView (a user-created editor that spit out maps using our standard text format), and the Atlas Project (a stand-alone random map generator also producing maps compatible with Civ IV).

Interface modifications have also been very, very popular, taking advantage of the fact that the vast majority of the interface code was written in the easy-to-mod Python scripting language. In fact, two of these mods – ulfn’s Proper Score Graph and 12monkey’s Plot List Enhancement – were so good we eventually rolled them into our patches so that they could be enjoyed by the most users possible.

In fact, interface mods have also birthed the concept of the “meta-mod,” which is not an original mod, per se, but simply a collection of other people’s mods so that they can be enjoyed concurrently. Gaurav’s Unaltered Gameplay Mod is a good example as it compiles all the best interface mods which do not actually change the core gameplay. In fact, the ability to mix-and-match mods has led some modders to focus on a la carte mods that are built with the sole purpose of being integrated into other modder’s works; TheLopez has produced a seemingly endless string of these mod components, including ones dedicated to pirates, random unit names, immigration, mercenaries, and even Mutually Assured Destruction.

Of course, scenarios and epic-game mods have been very popular as well. Dale’s Age of Discovery, Andrew Jay’s Feudal Japan, and JBG’s Song of the Moon have all provided interesting gameplay experiences on a fixed map. ArbitraryGuy’s Europa Europa and Houman’s Total Realism both carry the banner of historical depth and accuracy. Meanwhile, SevoMod carries on the “more is more” tradition originally found within Double Your Pleasure by vastly increasing the number of units, techs, buildings, and everything else found in the game. Thamis and Rhye are also rebuilding and improving their very popular Civ III mods within the Civ4 engine.

The most popular Civ IV mod so far is Kael’s Fall from Heaven, a fantasy conversion which adds spell-casting, heroes, and a rich back-story to the game. In fact, the mod has attracted enough interest to merit its own sub-forum on CivFanatics, dedicated solely to its development. At this point, the most advanced Civ mods are highly-complex team efforts – for example, Kael lists 11 “major contributors” to his project, a wiki is being developed with info on the mod, and a number of scenarios are even being developed by outside modders using Fall from Heaven as a base.

As Civ IV enters its second year after release, we look forward to seeing what new surprises the community has in store for us. Certainly, much is possible now that the actual game code is finally available to our fans. I have learned over the years that no one can either predict or control how people will play Civ. There will always be ways to approach the game that we as game designers cannot imagine.

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About the author: Soren Johnson joined Firaxis in 2000, after completing BA in History and an MS in Computer Science at Stanford. A former Electronic Arts employee, the focus of Soren's graduate work was on adaptive algorithms and human-computer interaction. Soren is the lead designer for Sid Meier's Civilization IV; he programmed and co-designed Sid Meier's Civilization III with Jeff Briggs, and was voted "Most Civilized" employee in 2003.

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Originally published in the The Chronicles of Civilization, part of Civilization Chronicles which was released in October 2006 in North America.

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.