Civilization 5 Free Download Full Version
Janet Denzel
Since 1991, the award-winning Civilization series of turn-based strategy games has challenged players to guide a civilization through history and build an empire to stand the test of time. Players assume the role of a famous historical leader, making all the crucial economic, political, and military decisions as they pursue one of multiple paths to victory.
2010: City-States, ranged bombardment, and hexagonal map tiles are just a few of the game-changing and persistent features that were introduced in Civilization V. Unique units, buildings, and leader abilities make each civilization more distinct than ever.
2005: Heralded as one of the best games of its time, Civilization IV was the first entry to feature Religions that can spread across the map and Great People with abilities unique to their class. Civilization IV also empowered players to choose different leaders for some of the featured civilizations.
2001: The introduction of Culture and Diplomacy victories in Civilization III afforded leaders compelling new ways to play. Strategically important resources, powerful civilization-specific units, and additional forms of government also debuted in Civilization III.
1996: Building on the foundations laid by the first game, Civilization II introduced new strategic considerations and an expanded arsenal of combat units. Civilization II was also the first game in the series to employ the now-familiar isometric perspective.
1991: Designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley, the original Civilization is widely considered one of the most influential turn-based strategy games ever made. Civilization launched with many innovative features and a sweeping strategic framework that persist in the series to this day.
Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy video games, first released in 1991.[1] Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the rest,[2] and his name is usually included in the formal title of these games, such as Sid Meier's Civilization VI. There are six main games in the series, a number of expansion packs and spin-off games, as well as board games inspired by the video game series. The series is considered a formative example of the 4X genre, in which players achieve victory through four routes: "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate".
All titles in the series share similar gameplay, centered on building a civilization on a macro-scale from prehistory up to the near future. Each turn allows the player to move their units on the map, build or improve new cities and units, and initiate negotiations with the human or computer-controlled players. The player will also choose technologies to research. These reflect the cultural, intellectual, and technical sophistication of the civilization, and usually allow the player to build new units or to improve their cities with new structures. In most games in the series, one may win by military conquest, achieving a certain level of culture, building an interstellar space ship, or achieving the highest score, among other means. Later games have introduced gameplay concepts and victories based on religion, economics, and diplomacy. Meier had adapted an approach for each new title so that it contains a third of existing features, another third that are improvements from the previous game, and the remaining third as introducing new features. Newer games often include extendable downloadable content that adds to that game, and often will become part of the new features in the next main game of the series.
The series was first developed by Meier while at MicroProse, the studio he co-founded. After MicroProse was acquired by Spectrum Holobyte, Meier left with other designers to form Firaxis Games in 1996, which has been the principal developer of the series since. Over the years, some of the crew involved in developing the series became successful in producing their own strategy games, such as Bruce Shelley (Civilization co-designer) of Age of Empires fame, Brian Reynolds (Civilization II lead designer and programmer), who went on to create Rise of Nations, and Soren Johnson (Civilization III co-designer and Civilization IV lead designer and programmer), who worked on Spore and Offworld Trading Company. Some issues associated with the Civilization name, due to the 1980 Civilization board game created by Francis Tresham, arose during the late 1990s but have been resolved through agreements, settlements, and publishing company acquisitions; presently Take-Two, the parent company of Firaxis, owns full rights to both the name and intellectual property for the series. According to 2K Games, a Take-Two subsidiary, the series has shipped more than 51 million total units as of July 2023.[3][4]
Sid Meier and Bill Stealey co-founded MicroProse in 1982 to develop a number of flight simulators and military strategy software titles. Around 1989, Meier wanted to start developing new types of games to expand his repertoire, inspired by the recent successes of the god games SimCity (1989) and Populous (1989).[5] Meier considered these games demonstrations that video games did not need to be about destruction all the time.[5] He worked with a recent hire, Bruce Shelley, a former board game designer from Avalon Hill, to craft new god games. They first created Railroad Tycoon in 1990, inspired by Shelley's work at producing Avalon Hill's 1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons, inspired by Francis Tresham's 1829.[5] Meier brainstormed upon his idea of combining global conquest inspired by Risk, city management from the early Empire games, and adding in the concept of a technology tree.[5] Meier worked back and forth with Shelley to refine this prototype before presenting it to the company in full to bring to a full release, which became the first Civilization game, published in September 1991. The name was selected late in the process, Tresham had already published the 1980 Avalon Hill board game Civilization, which was similar conceptually but had different game play. Sid Meier claimed that the board game was not a direct inspiration, however, MicroProse negotiated a license for the name from Avalon Hill.[5] The addition of Meier's name to the title identifying it as Sid Meier's Civilization, was from Stealey's suggestion at the time. Since games like Civilization diverged from MicroProse's combat simulators, Stealey suggested the addition of Meier's name as to capture the interest of players that would recognize Meier's name from the previous titles he developed and give these other games a try; Meier found this worked and continued to use his name as part of the series' branding.[6] Despite Meier's initial reservations, Reynolds built modding capabilities into the game for players, a feature that became a staple of the series.[7]
Following on Civilization, Meier was prompted to develop a number of similar simulation titles, a situation that did not sit well with Stealey who wanted MicroProse to continue to develop flight simulators; at this point, Meier did not actually work for MicroProse but served as a contractor, having sold his shares to Stealey.[5] One of these titles included Sid Meier's Colonization (1994), during which Meier worked with another recent hire, Brian Reynolds, as he had done with Shelley.[8] With Meier less involved with MicroProse, he opted to give Reynolds the development lead for creating Civilization II (1996), the first sequel to any of Meier's previous games and also the first to have two expansion packs, Conflicts in Civilization and Fantastic Worlds. Meier gave Reynolds some advice on the direction to take the game, and subsequently, Reynolds worked with Doug Kaufman, another MicroProse employee that had worked on writing their adventure games, for Civilization II.[8]
Stealey had pushed MicroProse to look towards home video consoles and arcade games based on their flight simulator software, but these investments did not pan out, putting the company into debt.[5] After trying to arrange financing from an initial public offering, Stealey opted instead to sell the company to Spectrum Holobyte in 1993, and eventually sold his remaining shares in the company and departed it.[5] Initially MicroProse was kept as a separate company from Spectrum Holobyte.[9] By 1996, Spectrum Holobyte opted to consolidate its brand under the MicroProse name, with that cutting many of the MicroProse staff. At this point, Meier, Reynolds, and Jeff Briggs (one of MicroProse's developers and music composers) left MicroProse to found Firaxis.[10]
Firaxis published additional titles by Meier, the first being Sid Meier's Gettysburg! (1997). Lacking the rights to the Civilization name, they subsequently produced Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a "space-based Civilization-style game"[11] released in 1999 and published by Electronic Arts.[12] Alpha Centauri uses a game engine similar to the one used in Civilization II[13] and its storyline continues from where the Civilization franchise ends, namely the colonization of a planet in Alpha Centauri.
Prior to the first Civilization video game, an existing 1980 board game of the same name had been developed by Francis Tresham, published in Europe by his company Hartland Trefoil and licensed for publication in the United States by Avalon Hill.[14] The board game and video game share many common elements including the use of a technology tree, and while Meier stated he had played the board game, he stated it had far less influence in his video game's design compared to the significant influence of SimCity and Empire.[15] When MicroProse opted on the name Civilization for the video game, the company worked out a deal with Avalon Hill to allow them to use the Civilization name.[5]
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