In Sid Meier’s Civilization video game series, the main objective of the games directs the player to build a civilization that will stand the test of time. As the original Civilization manual states, the player is the “ruler of an entire civilization through many generations,”[1] and must go about advancing his/her civilization by working the land, acquiring natural resources and gold, building several infrastructures to house one’s citizens, a military force, and deciding what political, economic and cultural beliefs said civilization will adhere to. As Ted Friedman states in his essay, Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subject and Space, “you hold not just one job, but many simultaneously: king, general, mayor, city planner, settler, warrior, and priest, to name a few.”[2] The player, in essence, assumes the role of an omniscient god, overseeing all aspects of a civilization’s rise and future sustainability based on his/her own management and strategy skills. Mark J.P. Wolf categorizes the video game, Civilization, as a “management simulation,”[3] whereas Raymond Williams defines a real life civilization as “an achieved state or condition of organized social life.”[4] Meier’s games attempt to balance the two together in his video game series; on one spectrum, the managing simulation provides the addicting gameplay, but on the other, the player must consider what constitutes an “enlightened” state for society in Meier’s mind. One such aspect that appears in Civilization IV is the role of religion in the grand scheme of the game.
Civilization IV was the first game to include religion as a component in the series.[5] I believe religion may have been withheld from previous iterations due to the sensitive nature of faith and the tensions present between opposing beliefs. Meier and developer Firaxis placed themselves in a precarious situation: religions have played an essential part of shaping global history, and adding them as a cultural element that could affect domestic and foreign policy would add another layer of realism to the series. Nevertheless, how could the developers use a computer simulation to accurately represent the role of religion in history without angering real religious factions? Furthermore, Civilization primarily concerns itself with the accumulation of wealth and resources as a way to measure which civilization comes out on top. How could religion work in the face of opposing gameplay elements? Included in the Civilization IV in-game “Civlopedia,” are the developers’ thoughts on the inclusion of religion. Firaxis explains, “We know that people have extremely strong opinions about religions – in fact, many a war has arisen when these beliefs collide. We at Firaxis have no desire to offend anyone…all religions in the game have the same effects, the only difference being the requirements…We offer no value judgments on religion; we mean no disrespect to anyone’s beliefs. We’re game designers, not theologians.”[6] Firaxis chose seven popular religions to employ, “(testing having determined that seven was the optimal number for gameplay),”[7] which are Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Taoism. The developer’s comments almost read as a disclaimer to the game itself. And in an effort not to offend, the implementation of religion in Civilization IV is extremely conservative; each religion functions identically. Instead of causing big rifts between neighboring civilizations or strife within one’s own society between factions, religion serves as a minor gameplay element in Civilization IV. However, Firaxis’s decision about religion’s role in the game has its fair share of ramifications in the grand scheme of Meier’s video game series.
Starting out any single-player campaign, each civilization begins without any preset religion; to install a religion in one’s civilization, the player needs to be the first to discover a particular technological advance through several turns of research. In one campaign, my civilization was the first to discover divine rights, which led to the establishment of Islam as my state religion. When I played another campaign situation, however, my civilization discovered meditation first, leading to Buddhism. In each of these two campaigns, religion served little purpose for my civilizations and had minimal impact on gameplay. In the first campaign described my neighbor, Isabella, Queen of Spain, remained cautious of me due to the installation of Islam as my civilization’s state religion. She would constantly badger me to change my state religion every other turn. However, my insistence to keep Islam had a minimal negative impact on trade negotiations with her. My other neighbor, Genghis Khan, installed Buddhism as the Mongol civilization’s state religion and remained highly tolerant of my Islamic tradition throughout the game. I found trading with Genghis Khan slightly easier due to our mutual tolerance of each other’s beliefs. In Civilization IV, the only difference between religions is that neighboring societies with different beliefs will generally not like the other. Firaxis made the decision to shy away from controversy, but other game franchises in a similar vein to Civilization, like the Total War series, promote the benefits and drawbacks of religion equally. In Rome: Total War, religion can be used as a measure of civilian happiness or a means to start a war against an opposing faction.[8] Albeit, with this example, the scale of Rome: Total War is limited to a city with few religions as opposed to Civilization’s world simulation. Nevertheless, for such a significant part of world history, religion does little to influence the big decisions of a typical Civilization campaign.
Apart from creating of easing tension between neighboring civilizations, religion in Civilization IV is a means to greater economic gains and increased citizen happiness. As stated earlier, for a game inherently focused on accumulation of wealth and resources, I found the implications of having religion contribute to a civilization’s wealth conflicting. In some ways, Civilization reflects real world societies; religion can be used for political and cultural influence over a populace and to fundraise money. The player, however, only sees the accumulation of money in a management simulation like Civilization IV. Religion in Civ IV is more of a tool to help a player manipulate money and politics in his/her favor. Civ IV features “Great Persons” who spawn in random cities infrequently over the course of a game. One category of “Great Person” is the “Great Prophet.” Each religion can use this holy person to construct an exclusive religious temple that provides the player with extra gold accumulation for each city in their civilization that has citizens who practice the particular religion, as well as a visual representation of the particular structure contained in the city the prophet was activated. While each of the seven religions function similarly, religious civics introduced mid-game provide some useful gameplay affects for a player’s society. In the case of my two campaigns, I chose the civic of an organized religion, allowing cities with a state religion to construct buildings twenty-five percent faster. Isabella of Spain chose to install a theocracy, which gave the AI-controlled adversary two experience points in cities with a state religion. Religious civic status effects can have a considerable positive impact on the growth of a civilization. In my two campaigns, I sent out several missionaries to neighboring cities in order to take advantage of the faster building rate caused by the organized religion civic. If I agreed to open borders with my adversaries, I sent missionaries to their cities as well to convert the populace, leading to more wealth accumulation on my part. But in the grand scheme of both campaigns, religion served more as a tool than a necessity to win.
Looking back at William’s discussion of the word, “civilization,” the author struggles to come to grips with a definitive definition. Williams says, “As such it has come to be a relatively neutral term for any achieved social order or way of life, and in this sense has a complicated and much disputed relation with the modern social sense of culture.”[9] The same can be said for religion’s role in Meier’s Civilization IV. On the one hand, it may seem jarring to include a controversial and passionate topic like religion into a computer game. In his essay on Civilization II, Ted Friedman states, “Simulation games offer a singular opportunity to think through what it means to be a cyborg.”[10] Civilization IV completely removes the human elements of religion in favor for the impersonal societal benefits doctrine and belief may provide. Yet the incorporation of religion into the game provides ripe commentary and implications to consider. Personally, I feel the inclusion of religion into Civ IV was a good first step, but Firaxis could have developed it into a more feature-rich aspect of creating and maintaining a civilization. For a game that has its main menu screen music play “Baba Yetu,” a Swahili version of the “Lord’s Prayer,”[11] religion does not play the complicated and multifaceted role it needs to for a modern video game. A vital part of all real civilizations, religion needs to complicate and challenge worldwide beliefs to engage, as Williams puts it, “in the general spirit of Enlightenment.”[12] To pay proper homage to its real-life counterparts, Sid Meier’s Civilization series must do so as well.
[1] Ted Friedman, Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subject and Space (New York University Press).
[2] Friedman.
[3] Mark J.P. Wolf, The Medium of the Video Game (University of Texas Press, 2002).
[4] Raymond Williams, Keywords (Oxford University Press, 1976), 48.
[5] Civilization IV, Glencoe, MD: Firaxis Games, 2005.
[6] Civilization IV, “Civlopedia Guide.”
[7] Civilization IV, “Civlopedia Guide.”
[8] Rome: Total War, Horsham, UK: The Creative Assembly, 2004.
[9] Williams, 50.
[10] Friedman.
[11] Civilization IV, “Main Menu.”
[12] Williams, 48.
File Select 