When Gandhi drops a nuke on you, you want to know the reason why. Civilization's take on the leader has always had a reputation for investing in nukes and making war, not love, and players eventually tracked that meme down to a bug in the original entry in the series of strategy games. We thought the issue had been put to rest, but Sid Meier himself says that no such bug ever existed.
The popular theory goes that Gandhi's nuke aggressiveness rating in the original Civ was set at one - far lower than any other leader in the game. However, once the AI started to adopt peaceful policies, that aggressiveness rating would go down even further - but the number couldn't go below zero, so it would roll over to the maximum value instead: 255. Thus, Gandhi starts dropping nukes on every neighbor.
It's a fun story, but according to Sid Meier, it isn't true. In his new memoir (via Bloomberg), appropriately titled Sid Meier's Memoir!, the designer confirms that the bug never actually existed. Instead, all the long-running jokes are all based on nothing. Meier says that "it's one of those mysteries that it's almost fun to keep mysterious".
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Sid Meier isn't sure gamers today have the patience for old-school Civilization. In fact, the legendary game designer isn't even sure he could push through the time investment. In a new interview, Meier says that Civ 1 was perfect for its time and place, but that's "not where most gamers are" today.
"I don't think I could make Civilization today," Meier tells The Independent. "I'm not sure even I would play it. It wouldn't fit in the zeitgeist. It asks a lot of the player, and takes a while to work it out. You have to play it once in order to understand what's going on. You have to be willing to spend time with it, and that's not where most gamers are these days.
"Civ came out at the perfect time. The PC had got beefy enough for us to make it, but weren't inundated with so many possibilities. If it had been created two years earlier we'd only have had four colours and it would have been much shallower."
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While Civilization 6 has had a rough time trying to hold on to the historical 4X crown, it's still one of the most popular strategy games around right now. The secret to the success of a lot of games - past and present - is of course mods. Civilization 6's mod scene is just as robust as the next one, and there are plenty of interesting options for you.
It's worth noting that Civ 6's mod-scene is mainly about smaller UI or quality of life mods. There aren't the sweeping overhauls of say Total War or Paradox games; it's a bit like XCOM 2 Mods where it's mainly about smaller content packs or UI improvements. These things can make all the difference though with a game a big as Civ.
The Best Civ 6 ModsCivilization 6 has had Steam Workshop support since 2017, so thankfully it's relatively simple to mod-up your copy of Civ 6 for the majority of us. Simply browse the Workshop find a mod you like and subscribe. There is an additional in-game mod manager-like area called 'Additional Content' to further manage which mods you have installed by activating/deactivating them.
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Few have made a greater contribution to PC gaming than Sid Meier. Following Nintendo's legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, he was the second-ever inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Hall of Fame, reflecting an extraordinary career in games development.
Meier established his first studio, the recently revived MicroProse, by creating some of the best PC simulation games of the '80s and '90s. After a successful experiment with more flamboyant subject matter in Sid Meier's Pirates!, he released his most famous hit, Sid Meier's Civilization, in 1991, and changed strategy gaming forever.
After leaving MicroProse, Meier founded Firaxis Games in 1996, and has guided it to become a global industry leader in simulation and strategy games. To date, Firaxis has not only done more than any other studio to influence turn-based and 4X strategy through the Civilization series and its superb sci-fi spin-off, Alpha Centauri, but has catalysed the modern resurgence of the squad tactics genre through 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
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