The theme for this post is to round up some of the more popular 4X titles that we all know and love, and break down how they represent the players population and growth and how that fits into the game’s mechanics.

This theme will be broken up into a few different posts, some to examine games that where the player is managing population in scales of cities or single worlds. Others will examine games where the populations are on a larger scale of planets or galaxies. Some of the specific characteristics of these systems that I will look closely at are how they are graphically represented, how they scale over time, and how the player interacts with the system on micro and macro levels.

For our next case study, we come across the behemoth of the 4X, Civilization 5 (and importantly both major expansions). This franchise basically set the foundation for the genre in many respects, and is often times still the gold standard as far as popularity, challenge, production value and re-playability are concerned. You probably already know this because if you’re reading this blog chances are you’ve logged hundreds of hours on each iteration of the series like myself.

Since so many of us are familiar with Civ 5 in particular, I’ll just do a brief overview of the system, and then dive right into each of the ways it’s great which helps this game set the benchmark for any 4X titles. It’s a system that has been refined in many ways over the years and some would say that Civ 5 represents the culmination of all those iterations.

Upon settling a new city in Civ 5, you’re brought into the city view, a window where loads of critical choices are made by the player over the course of the game. At first food is represented by an output of the surrounding tiles which are worked by the cities citizens, and because the player has the ability to control how those tiles are worked the population system can become a ‘game within a game’ in a good way.

As you would expect, grassland and river type of tiles generally provide more food, while forests and hills provide more production. Each turn your food incoming is weighed against consumption, (each citizen chows on two food per turn) and the remainder is added to the stockpile to eventually grow a new citizen. This basic framework is the staple that has been copied by so many other games, and you can’t blame them for doing so because it works so well. Things progress over time as you unlock new options to create buildings which promote city growth such as a lighthouse or granary. You can direct your worker units to improve tiles in your area with improvements such as farms, plantations and camps.

Growth is only really prohibited by your civs happiness, which changes over time as a city increases in size, as well as adding more cities to your empire. You’ll need specific luxury resources, improvements and wonders to satisfy your burgeoning cities and finding the right balance of growth and expansion is another staple of Civilization game play. At various stages of a game you may even find yourself taking citizens out of the fields and putting them to work in banks, universities or workshops to dedicate their efforts in different ways. The specialist citizens still consume food at a normal rate but don’t produce any by working a tile, meaning that if you want specialists you’ll need a way to feed them!

Easy to understand and difficult to master, this system has provided for tons of choices for the games designers, as well as the player. The concept of a worker unit and the improvable tiles (which we don’t find in the Endless Legend series as an example) as an example, creates a unique set of choices all by itself. Determining when to produce workers, how to keep them safe from enemies or barbarians while in the field, even deciding which tiles to improve first… all of these choices will come up, especially in higher difficulty games. Imagine how much less interesting or re-playable the game would be if when you settled a city your citizens just gobbled up its surrounding production without the need for this extra layer.

Like Endless Legend, the designers of the game have found interesting ways to integrate the growth system into practically every other game system. There’s an almost unlimited number of ways to try to exploit, role-play or just experiment with the growth system. Some civilizations will actually lend themselves to being played in very different growth metas, whether it be a “Wide” style where a Civ such as Rome, who benefits from creating buildings quicker in new cities that already exist in the capital, or “Tall” style such as Ethiopia who is granted a combat bonus when fighting against a civilization who controls more cities than it does. This reinforces concepts for the player that simply spamming cities all over the map may not be the only effective or interesting strategy to pursue.

Heres’ a list of ways a player can impact his food output or growth potential that integrates with other game systems or concepts:

Religious pantheon and belief choices

Using trade routes internally to ship food from city to city

Alliances and diplomacy with maritime based City-States

Culturally driven social policies and ideologies

Construction of buildings, improvements and Wonders of the World

What makes almost all of those concepts great is that they are almost all choices a player has to make. They must be prioritized or sacrificed in replacement of others, and over the course of a game it is these choices which define the player’s experience within the game.

Civilization 5 is in many ways the hallmark 4X experience. Many of its game design elements have been recycled, reinterpreted and reinvented by other titles in the genre. As the leader in its class, it is the most polished, consistent and accessible option available for newcomers and veterans alike. The population and growth system in this game is no exception. Flexible, approachable, and varied it’s something you can focus on, ignore, or automate to your own whim. 11/10.