# Has anyone ever won Civ4 in real life? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [July 5, 2011, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883 "2011-07-05T11:00:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/21 "2011-07-05T14:39:31Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The problem is that the real world doesn’t work like a game. It’s impossible to say which civilisation “owns” a city, or even to say where one civilisation begins and another ends. > > Take London for example. Is it owned by the Celts? The Romans? The Saxons? Normans? The English? All those civilisations have occupied the city and all have added to its cultural history… Lots of other cities too. Are LA and San Francisco Mexican cities? They were at one time. Detroit was a French Canadian city at one time. Certainly, the character of these cities didn’t change overnight when they came under US jurisdiction. ---
**Author:** ![awldune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@awldune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/awldune)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/22 "2011-07-05T15:41:18Z")
Diplo victory means basically that a country has won an election for “Ruler of the World” with a 75% majority. I can’t imagine anything similar could have happened in history. I don’t think anyone has come close to a domination victory either. > **[List of largest empires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires)** > > Several empires in human history have been contenders for the largest of all time, depending on definition and mode of measurement. Possible ways of measuring size include area, population, economy, and power. Of these, area is the most commonly used because it has a fairly precise definition and can be feasibly measured with some degree of accuracy. Estonian political scientist Rein Taagepera, who published a series of academic articles about the territorial extents of historical empires bet... Looks like the Mongol and British empires had about 33% of the world pop at one time, and the Persian empire 44%. But no one has come close to the 65% of land area criterion. (British and Mongols at about 20%) You might argue that in game terms most of the Mongol cities never came out of revolt and entered the cultural borders. Cultural victory is a bit arbitrary and probably impossible to evaluate in terms of real life. If we looked at the EU as a permanent alliance then maybe with Paris, Rome, and Athens. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/23 "2011-07-05T16:33:56Z")
China has to have a lot of points (cultural and otherwise) by now as well. They probably have the oldest reasonably-continuous state and culture, lasting 3000+ years. Of course there were several major periods of political division, but in the game mechanics a hundred years of “anarchy” isn’t that uncommon when switching governments or if the domestic situation is plain out of control. Still China has more continuity than any major modern state I can think of, and its history resembles a plausible in-game historical progression. China has a few Wonders (Great Wall and the Three Gorges Dam), the birthplace of Confucianism and Taoism with major Buddhist contributions as well. Plus they’ve got the prototype for the Forbidden Palace national wonder as well. Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou all have a good shot at being Legendary cities by now, by longevity if nothing else. What about India though? I must admit that I’m fairly ignorant about Indian history and culture… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/24 "2011-07-05T16:41:03Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > As for New York and LA not being legendary, they may have been founded late in the game, but by the time they appear, each turn takes less years and the wonders that they built (UN, Broadway, Statue of Liberty, etc in New York, Hollywood, Rock n Roll, etc in LA) give ridiculous amounts of culture. Awful lot of goodies in Washington DC… ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/25 "2011-07-05T16:50:09Z")
Nations are rather more clumped in the game than in real life. A typical Civ game has 8 or maybe 16 different nations, and it’s assumed that each “nation” includes other nations within its sphere of influence or closely allied with it. So the US and Canada, for instance, would probably both be regarded by the game as a single “nation”, as well as likely much of the rest of the Americas. And all of those small or insignificant countries in Europe and Africa would be considered part of some other country, even though they’re officially independent. As far as “legendary culture” goes, remember that it’s not as compared to other cities of the time, but compared to a fixed threshold. It’s not even possible for a city to have legendary culture too early in the game. And culture never decreases (at least, for a given nation controlling a city), so any city that’s not legendary now has never been legendary, under that rulership. I don’t know the Civ IV scoring formula, but the Civ III system was basically just population plus land area, with a little extra from happiness, all averaged out over all of history (theoretically, tech also entered into it, but only to a pathetically small degree). By this standard, China is the clear score leader, followed by India. ---
**Author:** ![Smurfie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@Smurfie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smurfie)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/26 "2011-07-05T16:51:35Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The problem is that the real world doesn’t work like a game. It’s impossible to say which civilisation “owns” a city, or even to say where one civilisation begins and another ends. > > Take London for example. Is it owned by the Celts? The Romans? The Saxons? Normans? The English? All those civilisations have occupied the city and all have added to its cultural history. > > And how many civilisations have there even been? Were the Angles the same as the Celts? The Normans the same as the Saxons? Is modern England really the same civilisation as Henry I? Is France really part of England or vice versa because some people from France conquered parts of England, and the reverse later on? With no common language, history, religion or anything else connecting all the cultures that can lay claim to London, it’s kind of hard to argue that London is really 3, 000 thousand years old. There is no hard and fast rule in reality to determine how a civilisation obtained a city or even when a city has changed hands between civilisations, and even when this can be agreed on, I doubt that any city has remained in the hands of one recognisable civilisation for 1, 000 years. Civilisations just don’t remain stable for that period of time. > > With that in mind, the British Empire seems like a winner, though the Ottoman Empire would have beat it by about 400 years, since ~1600 it controlled Constantinople, Athens, Mecca, Jerusalem, Cairo and Budapest. Once again, hard to argue that didn’t give it three Legendary cities. Maybe all these civilizations are just one…the Greeks. England, France, USA, Australia etc if run on a civilization game started out in Greece and so is ‘Greek’ or, if you like, ‘Western’. Other civilizations may just be Persian, Chinese, Mongol. Hell, maybe the world has just a few players if this were a game of civilization. Yea, yea…WWI…WWII…Germany but maybe that was just a ‘civil war in western civilization’ or some such 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Smurfie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@Smurfie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smurfie)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/27 "2011-07-05T16:53:30Z")
I see Chronos has beaten me to it. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/28 "2011-07-05T19:04:51Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > “the States”, meaning USA? Hard to name one city renowned in legend for its for its culture, much less three. L.A.: Hollywood New York: Statue of Liberty, Wall Street. I can’t think of a third city, though. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/29 "2011-07-05T23:03:50Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > L.A.: Hollywood > > New York: Statue of Liberty, Wall Street. > > I can’t think of a third city, though. What about the proposition of Washington DC? It has a lot of stuff specifically built for cultural value. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/30 "2011-07-05T23:17:22Z")
Then again, so do most capital cities. Civ might count that as all being part of the cultural bonus from the “palace”. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2011, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/31 "2011-07-05T23:28:39Z")
DC certainly is full of culture-producing improvements at least, and a lot of the city’s “production” is dedicated to various cultural purposes. There’s the Pentagon (a World Wonder), the Palace, and the various monuments and museums out to count as a National Wonder at least. Maybe we could shoehorn them into the National Epic wonder? Still… every capitol is stuffed with significant monuments and museums, which aren’t much renowned in other countries. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/32 "2011-07-06T00:19:46Z")
For some hard numbers: “Legendary culture” means 50,000 culture points in the city (on normal speed). Buildings generate culture per turn, and buildings over 1000 years old generate double their normal culture. There are 460 turns total, with late-game turns being shorter than early turns (1 year per turn at late times, 40 years per turn at early times). 160 of those turns are before 1000 AD, after which the thousand-year-old bonus won’t be relevant. There are 7 religions in the game; a city can in principle have a monastery, temple, and cathedral for each (though that would be difficult to pull off). Monasteries are worth 2 culture per turn, temples are worth 1, and cathedrals add +50% to the city’s base culture each. You can also get 3/turn from a theater, 1/turn from an obelisk, 2/turn from a library, 4/turn from an academy, 3/turn from a university, and 1/turn from a castle. So without counting wonders or Great People, it’s possible to get as much as 157 culture per turn in a city (and that’s assuming that the city has all the religious buildings from all of the religions, which might not be realistic). But of course, you won’t have all of those buildings right from the start of the game: I don’t think it’s possible to hit legendary culture without at least some Wonders (for which I don’t feel like crunching the numbers). ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/33 "2011-07-06T00:37:59Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > China has to have a lot of points (cultural and otherwise) by now as well. They probably have the oldest reasonably-continuous state and culture, lasting 3000+ years. What? The modern Chinese state begins in 1949, or 1911 if you’re insanely generous. As for culture, well, if we count China’s 3,000+ years as continuous, then we have to say European culture is continuous back to at least Sumeria, if not earlier. Anything else is flat racist. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/34 "2011-07-06T01:54:10Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > L.A.: Hollywood Seriously? Hollywood has only existed for 100 years. Do you really believe that it is renowned in legend? ? I can’t recall Hollywood ever being described as the birthplace of a God or Prophet, or the site of a major culture-defining event. Can you name any specific legends or events of cultural significance linked to Hollywood? > [@](#): > > New York: Statue of Liberty, Wall Street. Meh. If having a banking district and a hundred year old statue makes a city legendary, then I guess that every major city in the world must be legendary. By this standard Nazi Germany won a cultural victory easily once it controlled Vienna, Berlin and Cologne. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/35 "2011-07-06T02:16:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There are 7 religions in the game; a city can in principle have a monastery, temple, and cathedral for each (though that would be difficult to pull off). Monasteries are worth 2 culture per turn, temples are worth 1, and cathedrals add +50% to the city’s base culture each. You can also get 3/turn from a theater, 1/turn from an obelisk, 2/turn from a library, 4/turn from an academy, 3/turn from a university, and 1/turn from a castle. So without counting wonders or Great People, it’s possible to get as much as 157 culture per turn in a city (and that’s assuming that the city has all the religious buildings from all of the religions, which might not be realistic). But of course, you won’t have all of those buildings right from the start of the game: I don’t think it’s possible to hit legendary culture without at least some Wonders (for which I don’t feel like crunching the numbers). I never played past _Civ III_, but it sounds like Kyoto, Japan would get a pretty high culture score in _Civ IV_: it’s over 1,000 years old and it has a bunch of temples, shrines, and monasteries from at least two religions (Shinto and Buddhism). Then there’s the old imperial palace, one of the top universities in Japan and a number of other schools, and various other sites of cultural and artistic significance. Tokyo would also presumably rate pretty high, but I don’t know that there’s a third Japanese city that would be considered a long-time major cultural center. Maybe if you count Nara separately from Kyoto, but that seems like pushing it. Osaka is very important commercially but doesn’t have the cultural attractions of Kyoto or Tokyo. One big drawback for Japan is that so many shrines, temples, castles, etc., have been rebuilt over the years due to damage from fire, earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis. So while I believe there are a number of sites where a castle has stood for 1000+ years, I doubt there are many where the _same_ castle has stood that long. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/36 "2011-07-06T02:24:51Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > What? The modern Chinese state begins in 1949, or 1911 if you’re insanely generous. Right, but there has been a unified China in some form since the 13th century. That includes three dynasties, the Republic, and the PRC, but those have been changes of leadership of largely the same people and chunk of land. In Civ, changes of government like this are part of the game, but they usually come with a period of “anarchy”. Before that there were many successive Chinese imperial dynasties, with written records stretching back to 2100 BC. Granted there were several periods where China was split into several warring kingdoms, but those are the exception. > [@](#): > > As for culture, well, if we count China’s 3,000+ years as continuous, then we have to say European culture is continuous back to at least Sumeria, if not earlier. Anything else is flat racist. China has been dominated by a single language, single writing system, single government, and single ethnicity for the vast majority of its history. In Europe there have been dozens of languages from several language families, several different writing systems, dozens of different ethnic groups moving back and forth across the continent. It’s been composed of a multitude of small political entities that sometimes united as nation-states. Europe has only occasionally been “united” by relatively short-lived imperial conquests. I don’t think it’s racist to describe China as more culturally, politically, and ethnically unified throughout history than Europe. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/37 "2011-07-06T02:29:51Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Seriously? Hollywood has only existed for 100 years. Do you really believe that it is renowned in legend? ? I can’t recall Hollywood ever being described as the birthplace of a God or Prophet, or the site of a major culture-defining event. > > Can you name any specific legends or events of cultural significance linked to Hollywood? > > Meh. If having a banking district and a hundred year old statue makes a city legendary, then I guess that every major city in the world must be legendary. By this standard Nazi Germany won a cultural victory easily once it controlled Vienna, Berlin and Cologne. Pssst… people are mentioning specific “[World Wonders](http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/wonders)” which are included in Civ IV. Admittedly the inclusion of a particular historical construction as a “Wonder” is an arbitrary decision by American game designers… ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/38 "2011-07-06T04:34:06Z")
Even granting Hollywood as a wonder, though, its age still works against it. Even if it has a fairly high culture-per-turn, it’s existed for less than 100 turns. And apparently the game does have Nara on the list of cities for Japan. It looks like the officially-recognized Japanese cities are (spoilered for space):KYOTO OSAKA TOKYO SATSUMA KAGOSHIMA NARA NAGOYA IZUMO NAGASAKI YOKOHAMA SHIMONOSEKI MATSUYAMA SAPPORO HAKODATE ISE TOYAMA FUKUSHIMA SUO BIZEN ECHIZEN IZUMI OMI ECHIGO KOZUKE SADO After that, it starts going through “New Kyoto”, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/39 "2011-07-06T04:40:28Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > China has been dominated by a single language, “Chinese” is more a language family than a language, with many of the languages grouped under the term (Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min, etc.) being mutually unintelligible. ---
**Author:** ![Walther\_Ego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8dc957/32.png) [@Walther\_Ego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walther_Ego)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883/40 "2011-07-06T05:33:53Z")
It’s a great game, a great model for history, but it’s a simplification. One of them is that civilizations are fixed political units. In fact, that civilizations are fixed units. To me the next statements are not mutually exclusive: - There is a British civilization. - Britain is an important part of the European civilization. A game where you could lose political control of your civilization (like India, as a civilization strong but as a political unit historically not stable) would be way cool, but likely demand a big computer. Big like size of the Earth, [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-won-civ4-in-real-life/587883.md?page=3)