Yo I feel anxious about the world. We’ve had mayoral elections in my part of Canada where one candidate was backed with more gold than Croesus, so it wasn’t even a contest. In the UK people have not got the Labor government they hoped to vote for. And as someone who lives just a few hours’ drive from the US border, I can only pray that Orange Hitler doesn’t enter again. Or maybe I pray that he doesso that our neighbors to the south do not end up embroiled in a repetition of the civil war fueled by the denial of the elections. So I thought I’d play a game where I could direct the rise and fall of civilization myself. As a gift.
Civilization 6 is what is known as a 4X game. 4X stands for “EXplore, EXPand, EXploit, and EXterminate,” a phrase that offends my pedantic spelling sensibilities. Unfortunately, the four “exes” I spent a lot of time doing here were Exercise, Expire, Exclaim, and then Exit due to this game’s execrable gamepad controls, which are about as intuitive as a Heston Blumenthal recipe. I lost count of the times I moved the wrong unit or had a brain freeze trying to remember which button did what. I would have preferred a more common sense control system, mouse and keyboard support, or an interface that uses the power of thought, like the one Elon Musk intends to have.
My frustration is tempered by the reminder that few things bring as much joy as finding a barbarian camp in a Civilization game. Free stuff! Hurrah! As I progress through the years, the intellectually robust menu of advancements reminds me that there are many elegant paths to civilization. Learn how the world developed, through trade routes that reward mathematical thinking and advance your goals through philanthropic diplomacy. It offers a real opportunity to form a spiritual land of pure peace and happiness with environmental safeguards.
But we’re not here for that, are we? We want to play as Alexander the Great and watch the world burn! But the controls cause me to accidentally change unit locations when I want to attack, and unlike the still-excellent Advance Wars, on the Game Boy Advance, I can’t combine two weak units to form a strong one until later in the game. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
So I switch to a non-combat DLC scenario: Outback Tycoon, which involves settling in Australia in search of gold. And sheep. I love this scenario because it only lasts 50 turns and it’s mostly about sending out scouts and hoping they find something interesting before the snakes and spiders get them. It’s more like opening an Advent calendar than playing a video game. But I like it. Maybe I didn’t get enough Advent calendars when I was a kid. Or maybe it’s because we have no real-world adventures left. There is nothing left to explore. Nothing to be a pioneer. I immigrated to Canada in 2009 and discovered that they had already discovered the entire country. So I became a zealous missionary and opened up a crucial trade route: every year I transport Brits on holiday here to import irony, and I send Canadians to visit the places I recommend in the UK, where they arrive with suitcases full of aggression passive. .
Next, I try a new Halloween-themed stage. Hello! Playing as Cleopatra, you can only have the most basic military units… but that unit can turn barbarians into zombies. ANDour zombies. And then those zombies can do further zombies. Before you can say “brainzzzz“You amass an army of undead large enough to surround entire cities and take them for you. I love it!
I realize that at some point the rest of the world will develop fighter jets that will easily shoot down my zombies, but I don’t go that far. After about 100 turns, my zombie army is so large that it clogs the planet. And DDZA (Dominik Diamond’s zombie army) moves so slowly, and only as individual units, which is tedious. Also, as a Catholic, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the guilt of surrounding Vatican City with zombies and showing them that Jesus wasn’t the only one who was resurrected.
So I start the scenario again, returning to those glorious first turns. My first warrior, my first builder, my first buildings. I start each turn by talking to them, like I do with players in Championship Manager:
“Good morning, Frank, how are you doing?”
“Cool, boss. This monument is almost finished.”
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“Well, keep it up and one day I’ll take you to the Hanging Gardens, huh? Good morning Terry, how are you doing?
“I just discovered the Great Barrier Reef!”
“Good times! Give me 40 more turns to make a boat and I’ll send Frank there to help.”
But then they become just one of the many things I have to get around. It turns out that the modern The world is a very difficult place to navigate. Maybe a zombie apocalypse is the way to go.