Ah the Civilization series, where so many of us are familiar with the thought "just one more turn" has been taken to the complete extreme, with one guy playing a single game of it for 10 years. Leading to a future of endless war, climate change, starvation, and brutal '1984' like government.
Can you imagine playing a single video game for 10 years?
One man did. And it helped him imagine something else: a bleak, war-ravaged future version of Earth.
A member of the social news website Reddit who goes by the name Lycerius posted his results from a decade-long game of "Civilization II," a turn-based strategy games in which players build their own society. His epic struggle pushed the game to its limits, further than developers ever imagined or planned for.
The "Civilization" franchise is a series of strategy games that allow players to grow small tribes into large, sprawling nations. Players can manage resources, build armies and engage in diplomacy in an effort to grow their civilization into a world leader.
"Civilization II" was released in 1996. But when the third version of the game was released in 2001, Lycerius said, he was already deep into his current game and wanted to see how far he could go.
He doesn't play every day but returns to what he called a "hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation" when he has some free time.
Now in the year 3991, his world is down to three super-nations, each competing for dwindling resources, and a planet left scarred by multiple nuclear wars. His Celts are locked in a 1,700-year war with the Vikings and the Americans. All other nations have been destroyed or absorbed.
"Peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons," Lycerius wrote on Reddit. "Even when the U.N forces a peace treaty. So I can only assume that peace will come only when they're wiped out. It is this that perpetuates the war ad infinitum."
Because of the continual fighting, he was forced to abandon his democracy and adopt a communist state, because his Senate kept overruling him when he wanted to declare war. Also, his cities are filled with starving people (90% of his world's population died from nuclear annihilation or famine from global warming) because, he says, he has to keep building war machines to sustain his combat efforts.
"So you want a granary so you can eat? Sorry; I have to build another tank instead. Maybe next time," he wrote.
Constant nuclear bombardment and sabotage have melted the world's ice caps over and over again, resulting in the flooding of all terrain other than mountains. He said his world is full of swamp (which is useless for farming) and irradiated lands.
"Civilization" franchise creator Sid Meier said developers never even thought about someone taking a "Civ" game this far into the future.
"There's no way we could have tested for this, so it was a surprise to us," Meier said. "I can't say that we ever thought anyone would play a game of 'Civ' for that long. It's exciting that a fan of the series would dedicate 10 years to playing one continuous game."
Before you think Lycerius is just an unfeeling ruler, he said he does want to find a way to end the longstanding war.
"My goal for the next few years is to try and end the war and thus use the engineers to clear swamps and fallout so that farming may resume. I want to rebuild the world. But I'm not sure how. "
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The Civ 2 guy. He has played it for 10 years obviously that's not non stop.
Edit: He's still valiantly trying to save that world, imagine if he had devoted 10 years of spare time on something that might actually help real people? I'm not saying don't play computer games, I love playing them but this is more like a compulsive disorder.
The Civ 2 guy. He has played it for 10 years obviously that's not non stop.
Edit: He's still valiantly trying to save that world, imagine if he had devoted 10 years of spare time on something that might actually help real people? I'm not saying don't play computer games, I love playing them but this is more like a compulsive disorder.
It's no different than many of us spending 2 hours a day, everyday browsing the internet for the past 10 years.
It's no different than many of us spending 2 hours a day, everyday browsing the internet for the past 10 years.
Back, probably in the mid to late 90s, I read something that said the average person will spend one year of their life the Internet. I bet that's waaay low now.
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The Civ 2 guy. He has played it for 10 years obviously that's not non stop.
Edit: He's still valiantly trying to save that world, imagine if he had devoted 10 years of spare time on something that might actually help real people? I'm not saying don't play computer games, I love playing them but this is more like a compulsive disorder.
How much hockey have you watched over the last 10 years? You probably could have cured cancer.
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Originally Posted by Locke
Thats why Flames fans make ideal Star Trek fans. We've really been taught to embrace the self-loathing and extreme criticism.
The Civ 2 guy. He has played it for 10 years obviously that's not non stop.
Edit: He's still valiantly trying to save that world, imagine if he had devoted 10 years of spare time on something that might actually help real people? I'm not saying don't play computer games, I love playing them but this is more like a compulsive disorder.
This is a really sad post. I feel sorry for you.
Civ 2 was/is awesome. Kudos to this guy for pushing it to its limits!
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"For thousands of years humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable." - Carl Sagan Freedom consonant with responsibility.
I'm missing something here, the guy hasn't been able to finish the game by beating the other nations in war? I mean, when you got to the point were you are the dominant superpower there is no problem fixing up the whole world and buying everything for every city.
The way I usually played it was by developing a small nation of a few cities (6-10) of immense economic power. When eventually I got provoked into war (rarely searched it out, just defended my territories and cites from greedy neighbours) I went all out and just flooded the world with artillery. With my high economic output, my science was usually much higher than most others too. I'd be up against a nation (or nations) with 40 or 50 cities (always played on the largest maps) but they couldn't match my economic output. Once I finally got everything switched over and got a beachhead on their continent it was only a matter of time before I took everything over. Then as I felt more safe with my new holdings, I'd switch my main cities back to economics and science, and use the newly taken over cities to produce units. The benefit of this was I'd be raking in so much gold from my cities I could BUY units and upgrades with the rush builds for my newly taken over cites, and quicken the process.
Eventually it got to a point where there was just a wave of artillery sweeping across the globe methodically with an even larger army of engineers behind them cleaning up the mess and increasing the economic output of the cities.
Always stayed away from the nukes. I mean it's fun to do one or twice just to see what will happen, but if you're wanting to make the world a better place and have everything neat and tidy and clean, you delay the Manhattan project as long as you can, so you don't start the nuclear arms race. I would generally build all the science and wonder projects around that, and save that for the end when I didn't have anyone that would challenge me anymore.
I suppose you may be right, hockey does occur in the real world though.
And individual games only last about 2-3 hours.
So does this guys playtime in Civ. Its not like he's gone all Cartman playing WoW on the Civ 2. So how many hours have you wasted watching hockey in the last decade? It's the same thing.
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Originally Posted by Locke
Thats why Flames fans make ideal Star Trek fans. We've really been taught to embrace the self-loathing and extreme criticism.
I suppose you may be right, hockey does occur in the real world though.
And individual games only last about 2-3 hours.
Civilization 2 exists in the "real world" too.
I just don't understand your problem with this thing. What's the difference between playing the same game off and on for ten years than playing multiple different games off and on for ten years? I mean, he still played multiple games, not just Civilization 2. Not to mention, he also had a life. He didn't play it compulsively.
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He's still valiantly trying to save that world, imagine if he had devoted 10 years of spare time on something that might actually help real people?
Y'know, he's not actually trying to "save" it for some weird, backwards moral reason. He's tinkering with it out of pure interest.
With all due respect, you seem to have this twisted view that this guy is a loner who has been playing a game constantly for a decade, and thinks he's doing something morally good. He's not. It's just something that has turned in to an experiment, basically. It's like doing a study how X reacts to Y, or how X responds to doing Y. It's an interest, not an obsession.
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I'm missing something here, the guy hasn't been able to finish the game by beating the other nations in war? I mean, when you got to the point were you are the dominant superpower there is no problem fixing up the whole world and buying everything for every city.
In the man's very own words, "The military stalemate is air tight. The post-late game in civ II is perfectly balanced because all remaining nations already have all the technologies so there is no advantage. And there are so many units at once on the map that you could lose 20 tank units and not have your lines dented because you have a constant stream moving to the front. This also means that cities are not only tiny towns full of starving people, but that you can never improve the city" and then, "My goal for the next few years is to try and end the war and thus use the engineers to clear swamps and fallout so that farming may resume. I want to rebuild the world. But I'm not sure how."
He's been slowly figuring out how to "rebuild the world", and is being helped by the Civ 2 community as well. It'll be interesting to see how it'll develop. Makes me want to pick up Civ 2 after all these years, but I was young back then... game now kind of intimidates me, for some reason. Maybe one day.
How do the turns work at the end of civ 2? Does it go slower than by years. Because I was thinking that 3991 is only 2000 turns past the end of a standard game. So play a turn a day would only take 6 years. Now he is probably at the point of 30 minute turns but that is still only 1000 hours of game play over 10 years. Doesn't seem like all that much.
Man plays Civ 2 game for 10 years
