What is Civ For?
Jesse Smith helps shepherd six new civs to fruition in Civilization IV: Warlords
Jesse Smith joined Firaxis in 2003, after six years in the gaming industry. He has played a role in bringing more than 100 games to market on a number of different platforms, from Hello Kitty to Imperium Galactica II. Prior to assuming his current role as producer for the Warlords expansion for Civilization IV, he produced Civilization III: Conquests as well as Civilization IV.
Troy S. Goodfellow
Is Warlords a case of doing things you couldn’t do in Civilization IV or just a burst of new ideas?
It’s a combination. The foundation of the expansion is the Great General idea. We wanted to fit it into the original game, but we couldn’t. Same with the Great Wall, a wonder we wanted to have, but we didn’t have time to make it work. The scenarios and the idea for unique buildings for every civ are new ideas, though, as is the addition of the six new civs. In development, there are always lots of ideas that can’t be put into a game, even the size of Civ IV, but this expansion gives us the opportunity to try them again.
Some Civ players were frustrated by the relative difficulty of conquering their backward neighbors. Is Warlords an attempt to put military victories on par with cultural and space race wins?
Definitely. Conquest victory was much more difficult, and players tended to focus on the cultural and building wins. But we love the wargame aspect of the game and wanted to bring it back. We now have vassal states, allowing you to boss smaller civs around, and they count towards your domination victory. Plus, to get the new Warlord unit, you need to build experience in combat. The Warlord can build a new military academy or give experience directly to troops. The funny thing about Civ IV is that we focused so much on the builder side of the game that the conqueror got a little left out. Warlords should fix that.
How important was Firaxis’s fan poll/survey in deciding what would make the cut in Warlords?
Fairly important. We have a great fan community, and they had a lot of ideas. In the poll, Churchill was by far the number one requested leader—over 10,000 more votes than the next guy—so we had to put him in. The new trebuchet unit was also a fan-motivated addition. They had many more ideas for the epic game than the scenarios, so the expansion has moved in the direction of improving the epic game. We still have new scenarios, but some have been put aside for now.
How do the new traits fit into the game?
There are now three new traits. Protective gives experience to certain types of units, Charismatic helps with promotions and happiness, and Imperialistic allows greater Warlord and Settler production. More traits means you can have a greater variety in leader personalities, and, with 10 new leaders, we thought that that would be important. Plus, Charismatic gives us a category for those leaders that people are really, really drawn to. Traits are very hard to balance, though. If you give automatic experience with one trait, how should that stack in a city with a barracks? Does a free warrior or scout give one side too much of an advantage? How do unique units and unique buildings fit? The whole web of balance is actually pretty tricky.
Warlords adds 10 new leaders and six new civs, but some civs now have three leaders, while others, like the Arabs, are still stuck with one. Is this a concern?
Not really. Some of the leaders, like Stalin and Churchill, were very popular choices, so they had to be included. We’d like to add more, but something had to give.
Why did you choose the civs you did for the expansion?
Many of the civs are simply based on the scenarios we wanted to do. The Rise of Rome scenario has the Celts and Carthage, so they made it into the epic game. We built an entire scenario around the Vikings.
What makes a good Civ scenario?
A scenario has to offer something different from the epic game, not just a new map. If you can add a new gameplay element or put a new spin on an old one, that’s great, too. Take the new Unification of China scenario. Instead of spreading religion, you get to plant your bloodline in your enemies’ cities, making them more likely to support you in your bid to become Emperor. The modding tools we have in Civ IV make the creation of new scenarios much easier.
Any words for your loyal fan base?
People should be really excited about Warlords. This has been a relatively short development cycle, and we think that there is a lot of cool stuff for people to play with.
This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #188
