James ‘Lycerius’ Moore played a single game of Civilization II off
and on for ten years, extending far into a dystopian future that
he described
as “a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation”. The story caught
fire, spreading from reddit to the specialist games press and national
media before returning to reddit as
/r/theeternalwar, where fans trade fiction, music, and art.
Last week, I spoke to James about his experience of the game, the
rationale behind playing the same campaign for a decade, and what it’s
like to have your cool gaming anecdote capture the imaginations of so
many people. You can check out our previous coverage of The Eternal War
here.
You said in your initial reddit post that the campaign is about ten years old?
Yeah.
Do you know exactly…?
It’s about nine and a half, something like that.
Presumably there must have come a point when you decided that you were just going to keep on going. How did that come about?
Well, I’d played the game far into the future, and there were some
issues and I was just curious to see how long I could keep going.
There’s this misconception that I’ve played the game non-stop for ten
years, that’s not the case – I play it often, but over the years it’s
[been] every other day or so.
I play lots of games, do lots of other things, but this game – it
just kinda kept going and going. I noticed that, over time, nations were
swallowing up other nations and there were these environmental factors
and it was just really fascinating to muse on where it was all going. I
just wanted to see what the eventual endgame would be. It was for my own
edification, I never imagined that so many people would take interest
in it.
Was there something specific about the way this campaign went that allowed you to get into the kind of situation you got into?
I imagine that you could start up any Civ II game and do this. The
thing is, Civ II was a little bit more balanced than the other games,
and you’re able to prolong and enjoy the world around you a little bit
more, and in a little bit more detail – for example later games don’t
really have global warming. Well, they do, but it’s maybe a single tile
that’ll turn to desert instead of four.
In Civ II, things like that had enormous consequences. All of the
coasts would flood and farming would be useless, and it happened over
and over again – it happened two or three times before I started
questioning, well, what would it be like if this kept going on?
Eventually all the world’s land – the mountains and tundra – became
flooded swampland. It was really neat.
Image: m00nnsplit’s ‘Celtania Archives’ newspaper.
You found yourself in a fascinating situation at the end.
It was just morbid curiosity, you know, and I think that’s why it was
so popular with all these other organisations. I think people in
general have this morbid curiosity about the world and where it’s going,
and I think they saw this and just kind of latched on. You know, it’s
by no means an accurate simulation of world affairs or anything like
that, it’s just a game roughly based on such things, but I think it
really captured a lot of people’s imaginations.
You ended up in a situation with the three superstates, and
people immediately said “oh, it’s 1984” – this Eternal War thing. How
much of that basically came from the mechanics of Civ II?
Oh, almost all of it. As time goes on, in most Civ games – well, Civ
II and Civ V, now, that I’ve noticed – over time, throughout history,
larger countries will envelop smaller countries until there are a few
remaining superpowers. That seems to be a pattern in Civ II and Civ V in
my experience, so the longer you play the more likely that outcome is
going to be. Whether or not that’s part of the game design – whether
they had that in mind, I cannot say – but it’d be pretty neat if that
was their intention.
You said that it only maps onto real politics to a very
limited extent – but it really has captured people’s imaginations
because they see, for example, the story you told about having to shut
down democracy. That’s interesting in and of itself. Am I right in
saying that the AI factions are both theocracies?
Yeah, I believe so – a fundamentalist type of government.
Would that have been a more practical decision for you as well, that you didn’t take for other reasons?
Some people had argued that that might be the best way to go, but the
person that was able to complete it in 58 years was able to do so with
the communist government. In fact, the communist government worked out
very well for them.
What was the key in the end, to beating it?
A mixture of units – for example, the Howitzer unit. I was primarily
throwing tanks at the situation, and people who had a bit more tactical
depth as far as the game is concerned were able to amass armies that my
economy… well, I was concerned about saving but they just spent the
entire treasury on one big push and rebuilt from there.
It’s not a particularly optimistic message, is it?
Yeah, precisely. It really wasn’t my intention to conquer the world,
necessarily, but it appeared that this was the only way that peace was
going to be a realistic option. There was a glitch I believe when
playing on newer operating systems that the AI became much more
aggressive and I believe that was what was causing my issue with the
Vikings. Because of that it seemed like the only possible solution was
total conquest. Were I able to vent that then I would.
Image: GildedDuke’s Civ V Eternal War scenario.
The reaction to it has clearly been way and beyond what you were expecting.
No kidding!
What was that like?
It blew my mind. It was only on reddit for two or three hours before I
was getting all these calls, seeing it online – it was incredible,
absolutely incredible.
People have really taken to it, creatively. Solving the
puzzle is one thing – thinking “how do we fix this” – but the fiction
and the art, what’s that been like?
It’s a very strange sort of vindication. I’ve been playing this game
for ten years. This game was very important to me personally – it had
this nostalgic, sentimental value because I’d been playing it for so
long. I’d been playing this one game of Civ II since I was in high
school and it just grew on me. I had this narrative in my mind about how
this world went and I was really content for the longest time just
seeing where [it] went. Then to have this happen, to have so many people
show interest in something I had so much value and so much time
invested in – it just felt really good. It was a really good experience.
Have you played any of the Civ V scenarios people are putting together?
I have not yet. I’ve seen two so far, and I do plan to play them.
That in its own right is also great, that someone will do something like
that.
You said that you had your own sense of what that world was like.
Yeah, after a certain amount of years of playing this it, I was just
like, “wow… I had to do away with democracy”. There were so many things
that happened, I couldn’t help it.
Did you document it as you were going, or was it just in your head?
It was just in my head. It was like, well, yeah I’ll return to this
cool game I’ve been playing for a while. I just kept on playing, I
suppose, and I thought it was pretty neat and I’d share it with reddit –
and wow, the response was incredible.
Do you feel like it belongs to that subreddit community now, or are you tempted to do something else with it yourself?
I’m really not sure, but I put it on reddit and people have created
art out of it – that’s incredible, and it’s the community’s at that
point.
When I play Civ, my civilisations are always modelled after
how I would like the world to be. But I’ve also got friends who play
these games mathematically. They’re not worried about the connotations
of turning to fundamentalism, say.
I’m on the opposite end of that spectrum, I would argue.
In what regard – that you play mathematically?
No, I play… romantically, I suppose.
How much do you feel like you had to break down that romantic approach to Civ to keep surviving beyond a certain point?
I think that, in its own right, was somewhat romantic. The democracy
that I’d strived for was becoming a liability and the best course of
action was to switch to a communist state. My ultimate intention was to
restore democracy when the war was won, but that was romantic and adds
to the narrative of the whole thing. Tragically so.
Image: ‘Neo-Viking Spec Op’, by Gauntes
Turn-based grand strategy is having a bit of a resurgence at
the moment. Civ V: Gods and Kings is doing very well, Endless Space is
doing very well – do you think there’s untapped potential for narrative
in that genre, given your experience?
I would certainly argue that there hasn’t been enough attention [to
narrative] in grand strategy games, or at least the ones I’ve played –
Civ, GalCiv. I haven’t played Endless Space, that’s the new one, isn’t
it?
Yeah. They’ve got an interesting approach to narrative, where
their factions are really asymmetrical. You can be regular space dudes,
but you can also be omniscient amoeba people that can see the entire
map the entire time.
Interesting!
Your Civ story reached the point it got to because of the
hard balance of the game. Would imbalance ultimately break that, or does
it create better stories?
I think it can go both ways, depending on your interpretation of it –
for example, in Civ IV I played as the Holy Roman Empire, built the
Apostolic Palace in my capital, was the Pope, was able to set policies
to have different Christian countries vote on it. That was great,
because I was playing the role of the Vatican and that was a wonderful
game, I really enjoyed it even though I was probably the weakest
militarily. Because of my influence in the dominant religion I was able
to be quite successful. I think that’s a great example of imbalance
working in my favour. I think Civ IV was really great for that.
When I’m talking about balance I’m talking about the mathematical
balance of Civ II, where empires were so enormous at that [late] stage
of the game where each country has at least fifty cities and taking
three or four cities is nothing. In Civ V, if you take three or four
cities you’ve likely destroyed the enemy empire.
Is game design something you’re interested in taking further?
I’d love to take it further, certainly. It’s an art form, and
ultimately that’s where my interests lie. My day job is as an insurance
agent – dare to dream, right? So yeah I’d love to take it further, see
what comes along.
You mentioned the roleplaying element of playing as the Holy Roly Empire in that Civ IV game…
Yeah, it was incredible. I have an enormous love of history – I’m an
enormous history buff. Of course the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy,
nor Roman – but you could play as the Vatican in Civ IV and that was as
close as I came.
That drive to – not recreate history, necessarily, but to
re-enact certain parts of it – do you find that makes the experience
more satisfying, to have certain elements that you know you’re doing
‘right’?
Yeah, absolutely. You’re following these historical tropes that seem
to play out over the course of human history. When you see them repeated
in the game, there’s a wonderful sense of accomplishment.
Image: infectedmanz’s ‘Celtania Propaganda’.
Do you think there’s anything developers could be doing to
encourage that kind of creative engagement? It seems to be the thing
that creates all the best stories.
Absolutely. In fact, I think there’s a lot they can do. I’ve really
enjoyed what they’ve done with Civ V in bringing back religion and
espionage. If they pursued that further, and implemented internal
politics – I remember in GalCiv II, if you were a democracy you had to
choose a political party, and there would be an element of internal
politics which was incredible. Civ II had something like, if you took
over the enemy capital there was a chance their nation could fracture
into two opposing factions. There was also an interesting element like
that in Civ IV where if you founded cities on another continent you
could grant them independence and they’d become a colony – a vassal – of
your empire. That was beautiful. If they reintroduced those elements –
things like vassalship, colonisation – a little bit more complexity,
perhaps, when it comes to running your empire.
I understand that they’re focused on conflict and making warfare as
interesting as possible but things like inflation, interest rates once
you’ve built a central bank – I can understand why that might put off
some more casual players, I understand that completely, but I think it
should be an option. You should be able to increase the complexity of
the game.
I guess the deeper and more technical mechanical aspects of
these games, despite sounding really dry, really enhance the game’s
potential narrative depth.
I think it really does. There’s also things on the other end of the
spectrum. Perhaps the game could write its own history. The war between
Egypt and Arabia in, say, 1770AD – that could be recorded somewhere in
the game for you to review, for it to somehow affect relations or policy
in the future just as diplomacy between the West and the Middle East
today is still marred by the Crusades – a thousand years later! I think
that’d be really interesting. Keeping track, every game of Civ having
its own timeline, it’s own story tell – just as real history has.
This kind of story is great for Civ and Firaxis. You can
expect developers to be thinking, “how do we get this to happen, how do
we get a guy to drop a story on to reddit that just blows up interest in
the game.” The key to that seems to be including storytelling within
the game itself – so it doesn’t need to be something that people only
share on blogs and reddit. Making it something that the game keeps track
of.
Yeah, exactly that. And if you go to
civfanatics.com
there are people who have done this before, who have written stories
based on individual games. If the game itself did that, and rewarded you
for doing so, for creating this real history – I think it’d be
incredible. The storytelling potential is just totally untapped in that
regard.
Many thanks to James for his time, and a tip of the hat to the /r/theeternalwar community for their excellent work.
