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147-509: In general, the games are trade simulators where items are bought low, transported, and sold high . They achieved notability, however, for their representation of Venetian and papal politics, with players able to bribe senators and cardinals for political, military, and religious power. Overt attacks against other players can destroy one's popularity and influence, but the game offers a thieves' den where covert options include arson , rumor -mongering, and assassination . The games are won after

294-523: A United States Air Force pilot. Around 1989, Meier wanted to expand his repertoire beyond these types of games, as just having finished F-19 Stealth Fighter (1988, 1990), he said "Everything I thought was cool about a flight simulator had gone into that game." He took to heart the success of the new god game genre, in particular SimCity (1989) and Populous (1989). Specifically with SimCity , Meier recognized that video games could still be entertaining based on building something up. By then, Meier

441-494: A coasting trade for galleys , large caravans and convoys for important routes, and working for the good of all Venetians in public while covertly bribing officials and sabotaging rivals. Numerous items, however, are simplified: the doges were appointed for life but the Ten served only one-year terms and could only have a single family member serving at a time. The Republic of Venice maintained its allegiance to Rome throughout

588-461: A corporate bond with a stock call option attached to it. The price of a convertible bond is sensitive to three major factors: Given the complexity of the calculations involved and the convoluted structure that a convertible bond can have, an arbitrageur often relies on sophisticated quantitative models in order to identify bonds that are trading cheap versus their theoretical value. Civilization (video game) Sid Meier's Civilization

735-696: A 5-1/4" floppy disk which contained the first prototype of Civilization based on their past discussions and Shelley's list. Meier described his development process as sculpting with clay. His prototype took elements from Empire , Railroad Tycoon , SimCity and the Civilization board game. This initial version of this game was a real-time simulation, with the player defining zones for their population to grow similar to zoning in SimCity . Meier and Shelley went back and forth with this, with Shelley providing suggestions based on his playthrough and acting as

882-407: A bond, a yield curve of similar zero-coupon bonds with different maturities is created. If the curve were to be created with Treasury securities of different maturities, they would be stripped of their coupon payments through bootstrapping. This is to transform the bonds into zero-coupon bonds. The yield of these zero-coupon bonds would then be plotted on a diagram with time on the x -axis and yield on

1029-667: A car purchased in the United States is cheaper than the same car in Canada. Canadians would buy their cars across the border to exploit the arbitrage condition. At the same time, Americans would buy US cars, transport them across the border, then sell them in Canada. Canadians would have to buy American dollars to buy the cars and Americans would have to sell the Canadian dollars they received in exchange. Both actions would increase demand for US dollars and supply of Canadian dollars. As

1176-506: A consideration of different exchange rates to recognise the most profitable places of issuance and settlement for a bill of exchange (" L'arbitrage est une combinaison que l’on fait de plusieurs changes, pour connoitre [ connaître , in modern spelling] quelle place est plus avantageuse pour tirer et remettre ".) If the market prices do not allow for profitable arbitrage, the prices are said to constitute an arbitrage equilibrium , or an arbitrage-free market. An arbitrage equilibrium

1323-477: A currency or derivative). In academic use, an arbitrage involves taking advantage of differences in price of a single asset or identical cash-flows; in common use, it is also used to refer to differences between similar assets ( relative value or convergence trades ), as in merger arbitrage . The term is mainly applied in the financial field. People who engage in arbitrage are called arbitrageurs ( / ˌ ɑːr b ɪ t r ɑː ˈ ʒ ɜːr / ). Arbitrage has

1470-429: A fair amount of micromanagement (although less than other simulation games ). Along with the larger tasks of exploration , warfare and diplomacy , the player has to make decisions about where to build new cities, which improvements or units to build in each city, which advances in knowledge should be sought (and at what rate), and how to transform the land surrounding the cities for maximum benefit. From time to time

1617-526: A feature that makes the AI look stupid, take it out. It's more important not to have stupid AI than to have good AI". Meier also omitted jets and helicopters because he thought players would not find obtaining new technologies in the endgame useful, and online multiplayer support because of the small number of online players ("if you had friends, you wouldn't need to play computer games"); he also did not believe that online play worked well with turn-based play. The game

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1764-619: A financial crisis, often termed a " flight to quality "; these are precisely the times when it is hardest for leveraged investors to raise capital (due to overall capital constraints), and thus they will lack capital precisely when they need it most. Grey market arbitrage is the sale of goods purchased through informal channels to earn the difference in price. Excessive gray market arbitrage will lead to arbitrage behaviors in formal channels, which will reduce returns due to factors such as price confusion, and may even cause prices to plummet in severe cases. Also known as geographical arbitrage , this

1911-456: A freeport (left open to rivals but providing a large boost to popularity). The time and effort exploration takes is somewhat compensated by the occasional discovery of extremely valuable relics—such as a head of John the Baptist —that are sold to the cathedral at Venice. In addition to uncle Niccolo's stipend, the player can earn income from indulgences and government offices. Ultimately,

2058-530: A large loss as they can capture a higher after-tax yield by offsetting the taxable corporate income with underwriting losses). There are additional inefficiencies arising from the highly fragmented nature of the municipal bond market which has two million outstanding issues and 50,000 issuers, in contrast to the Treasury market which has 400 issues and a single issuer. Second, managers construct leveraged portfolios of AAA- or AA-rated tax-exempt municipal bonds with

2205-427: A letter from the player's wealthy uncle Niccolo announcing that he has died and left the majority of his estate to his daughters. He has left the player a yearly stipend of 100 florins (i.e., ducats ), a map of the known world, at least one trading vessel, and some advice reminiscent of Machiavelli : "you must stick to the good so long as you can but if compelled by necessity you must be ready to use other means" and

2352-460: A majority of the council at the decennial election allows one to hold the office of doge, controlling other appointments and Venice's taxation. Popularity can be improved by donations to the church, by throwing lavish masquerades, or by funding major works of sculpture, painting, and architecture. Defeating brigands and pirates in battle is also well received. The wealthiest families may purchase ecclesiastical benefices, providing income and influence in

2499-445: A map editor and a "king builder" to allow a player to customize the names and looks of their civilization as seen by other players. According to Brian Reynolds , who led the development of Civilization II , MicroProse "sincerely believed that CivNet was going to be a much more important product" than the next single-player Civilization game that he and Jeff Briggs had started working on. Reynolds said that because their project

2646-453: A military unit from earlier civilization periods could remain in play through modern times, gaining combat bonuses due to veteran proficiency, leading to these primitive units easily beating out modern technology against all common sense, with the common example of a veteran phalanx unit able to fend off a battleship. Meier noted that this resulted from not anticipating how players would use units, expecting them to have used their forces more like

2793-559: A new land, a new technology, another tough foe - and you tell yourself, "just one more game", even as the first rays of the new sun creep into your room ... the most acute case of game-lock we've ever felt. A critic for Next Generation judged the Super NES version to be a disappointing port, with a cumbersome menu system (particularly that the "City" and "Production" windows are on separate screens), an unintuitive button configuration, and ugly scaled down graphics. However, he gave it

2940-481: A number of free and open source versions and inspired similar games by other commercial developers. Computer Gaming World stated that "a new Olympian in the genre of god games has truly emerged", comparing Civilization 's importance to computer games to that of the wheel. The game was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #183 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave

3087-408: A number of acquisitions and legal actions, the Civilization brand (both as a board game and video game) is now owned by Take-Two, and Firaxis, under Meier's oversight, continues to develop games in the Civilization series. Civilization has been called one of the most important strategy games of all time, and has a loyal following of fans. This high level of interest has led to the creation of

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3234-619: A positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For example, an arbitrage opportunity is present when there is the possibility to instantaneously buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price. In principle and in academic use, an arbitrage is risk-free; in common use, as in statistical arbitrage , it may refer to expected profit, though losses may occur, and in practice, there are always risks in arbitrage, some minor (such as fluctuation of prices decreasing profit margins), some major (such as devaluation of

3381-404: A positive recommendation due to the strong gameplay and strategy of the original game: "if you've never taken a crack at this game before, be prepared to lose hours, even days, trying to conquer those pesky Babylonians." Sir Garnabus of GamePro , in contrast, was pleased with the Super NES version's interface, and said the graphics and audio are above that of a typical strategy game. He also said

3528-400: A predetermined number of turns (years) by the player with the highest net worth, including the value of bribed senators and cardinals. The game's world map has been praised as "capturing what exploring is really like", as the player expands beyond the known and certain world into distant seas and lands which have been filled in only by rumor, legend, and wild speculation. The games begin with

3675-586: A result, there would be an appreciation of the US currency. This would make US cars more expensive and Canadian cars less so until their prices were similar. On a larger scale, international arbitrage opportunities in commodities, goods, securities , and currencies tend to change exchange rates until the purchasing power is equal. In reality, most assets exhibit some difference between countries. These, transaction costs , taxes, and other costs provide an impediment to this kind of arbitrage. Similarly, arbitrage affects

3822-511: A sequel, Heart of Africa . Bunten never returned to the idea of Civilization . Don Daglow , designer of Utopia , the first simulation game , began work programming a version of Civilization in 1987. He dropped the project, however, when he was offered an executive position at Broderbund , and never returned to the game. Sid Meier and Bill Stealey co-founded MicroProse in 1982 to develop flight simulators and other military strategy video games based on Stealey's past experiences as

3969-400: A similar game but embedded in a medieval-fantasy setting where instead of technologies the player (a powerful wizard) develops spells, among other things. In 1999, Activision released Civilization: Call to Power , a sequel of sorts to Civilization II but created by a completely different design team. Call to Power spawned a sequel in 2000, but by then Activision had sold the rights to

4116-488: A similar game titled Colonization . Civilization is generally considered the first major game in the genre of " 4X ", with the four "X"s equating to "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate", a term developed by Alan Emrich in promoting 1993's Master of Orion . While other video games with the principles of 4X had been released prior to Civilization , future 4X games would attribute some of their basic design principles to Civilization . A famous supposed bug in

4263-473: A single computer ( hotseat ) or connecting two computers via cable ( null modem ) or internet ( modem ). Hotseat play supports up to four players; cable and modem play are limited to two human players against two computer opponents. Machiavelli added features to ease play by e-mail ( PBEM ), which supports up to four players. Merchant Prince II introduced TCP/IP support, but some players reported difficulties, including buggy trade routes. While warning that

4410-453: A small amount closer (but often no closer than 0), while they can get very far apart. The day-to-day risks are generally small because the transactions involve small differences in price, so an execution failure will generally cause a small loss (unless the trade is very big or the price moves rapidly). The rare case risks are extremely high because these small price differences are converted to large profits via leverage (borrowed money), and in

4557-483: A try. This approach worked, according to Meier, and he would continue this naming scheme for other titles in the future as a type of branding. By the time the game was completed and ready for release, Meier estimated that it had cost $ 170,000 in development. Civilization was released in September 1991. Because of the animosity that MicroProse's management had towards Meier's games, there was very little promotion of

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4704-421: A turn-based mode, or in a simultaneous mode where each player took their turn at the same time and only progressing to the next turn once all players have confirmed being finished that turn. The game, in addition to better support for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 , supported connectivity through LAN , primitive Internet play, modem, and direct serial link, and included a local hotseat mode. CivNet also included

4851-400: A war-based board game to protect borders and maintain zones of control rather than creating "stacks of doom". Future civilization games have had many changes in combat systems to prevent such oddities, though these games do allow for such random victories. The 1999 game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was also created by Meier and is in the same genre, but with a futuristic/space theme; many of

4998-481: Is a 1991 turn-based strategy 4X video game developed and published by MicroProse . The game was originally developed for MS-DOS running on a PC , and it has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms. The player is tasked with leading an entire human civilization over the course of several millennia by controlling various areas such as urban development, exploration, government, trade, research, and military. The player can control individual units and advance

5145-458: Is a measure of market efficiency. Arbitrage tends to reduce price discrimination by encouraging people to buy an item where the price is low and resell it where the price is high (as long as the buyers are not prohibited from reselling and the transaction costs of buying, holding, and reselling are small, relative to the difference in prices in the different markets). Arbitrage moves different currencies toward purchasing power parity . Assume that

5292-404: Is a precondition for a general economic equilibrium . The "no arbitrage" assumption is used in quantitative finance to calculate a unique risk neutral price for derivatives . Arbitrage-free pricing for bonds is the method of valuing a coupon-bearing financial instrument by discounting its future cash flows by multiple discount rates. By doing so, a more accurate price can be obtained than if

5439-475: Is augmented by the quintessential research and development model, as you struggle to erect the Pyramids, discover gunpowder, and launch a colonization spacecraft to Alpha Centauri . For its day, Civilization had the toughest computer opponents around - even taking into account the "cheats", that in most instances added rather than detracted from the game. Just when you think the game might bog down, you discover

5586-491: Is considered the first sequel of any Sid Meier game. Stealey eventually sold his shares in MicroProse and left the company, and Spectrum HoloByte opted to consolidate the two companies under the name MicroProse in 1996, eliminating numerous positions at MicroProse in the process. As a result, Meier, Briggs, and Reynolds all opted to leave the company and founded Firaxis , which by 2005 became a subsidiary of Take-Two . After

5733-431: Is generally possible only with securities and financial products that can be traded electronically, and even then, when each leg of the trade is executed, the prices in the market may have moved. Missing one of the legs of the trade (and subsequently having to trade it soon after at a worse price) is called 'execution risk' or more specifically 'leg risk'. In the simplest example, any good sold in one market should sell for

5880-435: Is highly unpopular and must be compensated through fines. For the devious, impatient, or wrathful, " den of iniquities " permits players to burn others' warehouses and homes, destroy reputations with rumormongering, or to assassinate senators, cardinals, doges, and popes. Being tied to the act can destroy one's reputation, but other players can be framed as well. The map the player receives from uncle Niccolo resembles those of

6027-441: Is impressive, and the look and feel of the game will keep you playing and exploring for months. Truly a remarkable title." That same year, PC Gamer UK named its Windows release the sixth best computer game of all time, calling it Sid Meier's "crowning glory". On March 12, 2007, The New York Times reported on a list of the ten most important video games of all time, the so-called game canon , including Civilization . By

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6174-626: Is led by a famous historical figure, such as Mahatma Gandhi for India. The scope of Civilization is larger than most other games. The game begins in 4000 BC , before the Bronze Age , and can last through to AD 2100 (on the easiest setting) with Space Age and "future technologies". At the start of the game there are no cities anywhere in the world: the player controls one or two settler units, which can be used to found new cities in appropriate sites (and those cities may build other settler units, which can go out and found new cities, thus expanding

6321-461: Is often referred to as limits to arbitrage . Generally, it is impossible to close two or three transactions at the same instant; therefore, there is the possibility that when one part of the deal is closed, a quick shift in prices makes it impossible to close the other at a profitable price. However, this is not necessarily the case. Many exchanges and inter-dealer brokers allow multi legged trades (e.g. basis block trades on LIFFE). Competition in

6468-475: Is that such a spread will eventually be zero, if and when the takeover is completed. The risk is that the deal "breaks" and the spread massively widens. Also called municipal bond relative value arbitrage , municipal arbitrage , or just muni arb , this hedge fund strategy involves one of two approaches. The term "arbitrage" is also used in the context of the Income Tax Regulations governing

6615-403: Is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets  – striking a combination of matching deals to capitalize on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded . When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and

6762-543: Is the simplest form of arbitrage. In spatial arbitrage, an arbitrageur looks for price differences between geographically separate markets. For example, there may be a bond dealer in Virginia offering a bond at 100-12/23 and a dealer in Washington bidding 100-15/23 for the same bond. For whatever reason, the two dealers have not spotted the difference in the prices, but the arbitrageur does. The arbitrageur immediately buys

6909-415: Is used to magnify the reward through leverage. One way of reducing this risk is through the illegal use of inside information , and risk arbitrage in leveraged buyouts was associated with some of the famous financial scandals of the 1980s, such as those involving Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky . Another risk occurs if the items being bought and sold are not identical and the arbitrage is conducted under

7056-401: The 1829 / 1830 board games. Railroad Tycoon was generally well received at its release, but the title did not fit within the nature of flight simulators and military strategy from MicroProse's previous catalog. Meier and Shelley had started a sequel to Railroad Tycoon shortly after its release, but Stealey canceled the project. One positive aspect both had taken from Railroad Tycoon was

7203-399: The Civilization series, this is largely a cosmetic choice, affecting titles, city names, musical heralds, and color. The choice does affect their starting position on the "Play on Earth" map, and thus different resources in one's initial cities, but has no effect on starting position when starting a random world game or a customized world game. The player's choice of civilization also prevents

7350-665: The Holy Land , African gold and ivory , Chinese silk , and Indonesian spices , though not salt or slaves . The cities include major centers such as Venice and Khanbaliq (misspelled "Kahnbalig"), along with oddities like Antioch and imaginary locales like Shangri-La (as "Xiangrala"). Depending on the difficulty level, brigandry and piracy may be rampant and each successful attack makes them stronger still. Guards may be hired to deal with them but can be quite expensive and, if unpaid, will turn to brigandage. Goods become extremely valuable in times of crisis: during interdicts from

7497-466: The Western Schism but the earlier Avignon Papacy goes unmentioned. Cities only occasionally and randomly close themselves to trade. Florence is treated as a seaport in place of Pisa and Constantinople is given its earlier and terser name Byzantium . Merchant Prince II included a few cut scenes and five new scenarios in addition to Afro-Eurasia and the random map generator. They were

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7644-457: The college of cardinals . Enough influence at a conclave gives a player control over the papacy itself. Popes may embezzle church funds, " excommunicate " (i.e., place an interdict upon) Christian cities , and gather crusading armies . In some games, overindulgence in indulgences provokes an earlier Reformation , turning northern cities against Italy and its traders. Direct attacks against friendly cities or fellow Venetians, when proven,

7791-594: The greatest video games ever made by several publications. A multiplayer remake , Sid Meier's CivNet , was released for the PC in 1995. Civilization was followed by several sequels starting with Civilization II , with similar or modified scenarios. Civilization is a turn-based single-player strategy game. The player takes on the role of the ruler of a civilization , starting with one (or occasionally two) settler units, and attempts to build an empire in competition with two to seven other civilizations. The game requires

7938-719: The rounding of the Cape of Good Hope but not the North Cape . This can be replaced by randomized maps with variable amounts of ocean, forest, desert, &c. The game is won by the first player to acquire a million florins or by the player with the highest net worth at game's end. The player competes with three other families—either other humans or AIs of variable difficulty—to be the most successful clan in Venice . Opponents may be negotiated or allied with, aided, or threatened. The Council of Ten may all be bribed into service, allowing

8085-430: The wheel , and the alphabet to, near the end of the game, nuclear fission and spaceflight . Players can gain a large advantage if their civilization is the first to learn a particular technology (the secrets of flight, for example) and put it to use in a military or other context. Most advances give access to new units, city improvements or derivative technologies: for example, the chariot unit becomes available after

8232-402: The y -axis. Since the yield curve displays market expectations on how yields and interest rates may move, the arbitrage-free pricing approach is more realistic than using only one discount rate. Investors can use this approach to value bonds and find price mismatches, resulting in an arbitrage opportunity. If a bond valued with the arbitrage-free pricing approach turns out to be priced higher in

8379-536: The " Golden Rule " that "he who has the gold makes the rules". The player's goal—over one lifetime or several—is to improve his family's standing. Players choose a family crest and surname rather than an individual name. Play begins in AD ;1300 and can last (in the first two titles) as late as 1492, the year of Columbus 's rediscovery of the Americas . The default map covers all of Afro-Eurasia and permits

8526-619: The Doge of China or the Pope of Asia". Merchant Prince was written by Several Dudes Holistic Gaming and released by Quantum Quality Productions (QQP) in 1993. Ed Pike credited his rereading of Machiavelli 's Prince during the 1992 US presidential election , along with post- Watergate American politics generally, for his concept of the game. Pike said he aimed to "provide food for thought about our current times while remaining entertaining and not overly depressing". HDI also considered setting

8673-917: The Hanse (the Hanseatic League in the North and Baltic seas), the Mediterranean (a Venetian family), the Orient (a Shanghainese trader in the Far East ), Marco Polo (along the Silk Road ), and a fantasy treatment of Atlantis (represented as a single island city in the Atlantic). The scenarios were not differentiated apart from their maps, however: players continued to see Venetian gondolas and St Mark's in "Atlantis" and "compete[d] to become

8820-409: The assumption that the prices of the items are correlated or predictable; this is more narrowly referred to as a convergence trade . In the extreme case this is merger arbitrage, described below. In comparison to the classical quick arbitrage transaction, such an operation can produce disastrous losses. As arbitrages generally involve future movements of cash, they are subject to counterparty risk :

8967-431: The board game market was weakening in contrast to the video game market, and initially worked on F-19 Stealth Fighter . Meier recognized Shelley's abilities and background in game design and took him on as personal assistant designer to brainstorm new game ideas. The two initially worked on ideas for Covert Action , but had put these aside when they came up with the concepts for Railroad Tycoon (1990), based loosely on

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9114-522: The bond from the Virginia dealer and sells it to the Washington dealer. Also known as interexchange arbitrage, this is the form of arbitrage that takes advantage of the difference between two or more crypto exchanges. For example, on HTX token like LSK could be priced at $ 1.39 while on Gate it could be sold for $ 1.5. Although there are some risks involved in that type of arbitrage, such as network and exchange fees, blockchain overload, and inability to deposit or withdraw funds, this activity remains one of

9261-436: The bonds in t 1 move closer together to finally become the same at t T . Arbitrage may take place when: Arbitrage is not simply the act of buying a product in one market and selling it in another for a higher price at some later time. The transactions must occur simultaneously to avoid exposure to market risk, or the risk that prices may change in one market before both transactions are complete. In practical terms, this

9408-438: The box, the game usually crashed almost immediately if computer opponents were set at any difficulty except Novice. A patch (v.1.1) was released to fix the bug. HDI and TalonSoft (an imprint of Take-Two ) released Merchant Prince II in 2001. Only small galleys and light guards were available at game start; other aspects of the game now had to be unlocked via payments to a Leonardo figure. Additional new "technologies" made

9555-590: The city in which they are built (for example, the Colossus ), every city on the continent (for example, J.S. Bach's Cathedral), or the civilization as a whole (for example, Darwin's Voyage ). Some wonders are made obsolete by new technologies. The game can be won by conquering all other civilizations or by winning the space race by reaching the star system of Alpha Centauri . British designer Francis Tresham released his Civilization board game in 1980 under his company Hartland Trefoil. Avalon Hill had obtained

9702-410: The company into debt, and Stealey eventually sold the company to Spectrum HoloByte in 1993; Spectrum HoloByte kept MicroProse as a separate company on acquisition. Meier would continue and develop Civilization II along with Brian Reynolds , who served in a similar role to Shelley as design assistant, as well as help from Jeff Briggs and Douglas Kaufman. This game was released in early 1996, and

9849-472: The company's direction and culture. Stealey wanted to continue to pursue the military-themed titles, while Meier wanted to continue his success with simulation games. Shelley left MicroProse in 1992 and joined Ensemble Studios , where he used his experience with Civilization to design the Age of Empires games. Stealey had pushed MicroProse to develop console and arcade-based versions of their games, but this put

9996-510: The computer from being able to play as that civilization or the other civilization of the same color, and since computer-controlled opponents display certain traits of their civilizations this affects gameplay as well. The Aztecs are both fiercely expansionist and generally extremely wealthy, for example. Other civilizations include the Americans, the Mongols , and Romans . Each civilization

10143-472: The current price, if the merger goes through as predicted. Traditionally, arbitrage transactions in the securities markets involve high speed, high volume, and low risk. At some moment a price difference exists, and the problem is to execute two or three balancing transactions while the difference persists (that is, before the other arbitrageurs act). When the transaction involves a delay of weeks or months, as above, it may entail considerable risk if borrowed money

10290-408: The development process. MicroProse recognized at this point the 1980 Civilization board game may conflict with their video game, as it shared a similar theme including the technology tree. Meier had noted the board game's influence but considered it not as great as Empire or SimCity , while others have noted significant differences that made the video game far different from the board game such as

10437-474: The difference between the bond spread and the CDS premium, in a financial crisis, the bonds may default and the CDS writer/seller may fail, due to the stress of the crisis, causing the arbitrageur to face steep losses. Arbitrage trades are necessarily synthetic, leveraged trades, as they involve a short position. If the assets used are not identical (so a price divergence makes the trade temporarily lose money), or

10584-472: The difference in interest rates paid on government bonds issued by the various countries, given the expected depreciation in the currencies relative to each other (see interest rate parity ). Arbitrage transactions in modern securities markets involve fairly low day-to-day risks, but can face extremely high risk in rare situations, particularly financial crises , and can lead to bankruptcy . Formally, arbitrage transactions have negative skew – prices can get

10731-446: The discount rate may differ for each cash flow. Each cash flow can be considered a zero-coupon instrument that pays one payment upon maturity. The discount rates used should be the rates of multiple zero-coupon bonds with maturity dates the same as each cash flow and similar risk as the instrument being valued. By using multiple discount rates, the arbitrage-free price is the sum of the discounted cash flows . Arbitrage-free price refers to

10878-524: The documentation is incomplete". In 1992 the magazine named it the Overall Game of the Year, in 1993 added the game to its Hall of Fame, and in 1996 chose Civilization as the best game of all time: While some games might be equally addictive, none have sustained quite the level of rich, satisfying gameplay quite like Sid Meier's magnum opus. The blend of exploration, economics, conquest and diplomacy

11025-413: The duration risk hedged by shorting the appropriate ratio of taxable corporate bonds. These corporate equivalents are typically interest rate swaps referencing Libor or SIFMA . The arbitrage manifests itself in the form of a relatively cheap longer maturity municipal bond, which is a municipal bond that yields significantly more than 65% of a corresponding taxable corporate bond. The steeper slope of

11172-422: The effect described. He noted that all leaders in the game become "pretty ornery" after their acquisition of nuclear weapons, and suggested that this behaviour simply seemed more surprising and memorable when it happened to Gandhi. Meier, in his autobiography, stated "That kind of bug comes from something called unsigned characters, which are not the default in the C programming language, and not something I used for

11319-415: The effect of causing prices of the same or very similar assets in different markets to converge. "Arbitrage" is a French word and denotes a decision by an arbitrator or arbitration tribunal (in modern French, " arbitre " usually means referee or umpire ). In the sense used here, it was first defined in 1704 by Mathieu de la Porte in his treatise " La science des négociants et teneurs de livres " as

11466-400: The empire). Settlers can also alter terrain, build improvements such as mines and irrigation , build roads to connect cities, and later in the game they can construct railroads which offer unlimited movement. As time advances, new technologies are developed; these technologies are the primary way in which the game changes and grows. At the start, players choose from advances such as pottery ,

11613-434: The existing technologies and units to make sure they felt appropriate and did not break the game. Most of the game was originally developed with art crafted by Meier, and MicroProse's art department helped to create most of the final assets, though some of Meier's original art was used. Shelley wrote out the "Civilopedia" entries for all the elements of the game and the game's large manual. The name Civilization came late in

11760-439: The exploration, conquest and settlement of the game's world. The player can also make such decisions as setting forms of government, tax rates and research priorities. The player's civilization is in competition with other computer-controlled civilizations, with which the player can enter diplomatic relationships that can either end in alliances or lead to war. Civilization was designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley following

11907-474: The failure of the other participant in a substantial transaction, or a series of transactions, to fulfill their financial obligations. Liquidity risk, conversely, emerges when an entity is necessitated to allocate additional monetary resources as margin, but encounters a deficit in the required capital. In the academic literature, the idea that seemingly very low-risk arbitrage trades might not be fully exploited because of these risk factors and other considerations

12054-416: The functionality of the zoning approach. Meier felt adding military and combat to the game was necessary: "The game really isn't about being civilized. The competition is what makes the game fun and the players play their best. At times, you have to make the player uncomfortable for the good of the player." Meier also opted to include a technology tree that would help to open the game to many more choices to

12201-405: The game "captures the greed and treachery of medieval Italy even more than the classic Machiavelli boardgame ". Computer Game Review gave it a platinum triad award (high marks from three reviewers) before naming it the magazine's 1994 strategy game of the year. Arbitrage In economics and finance , arbitrage ( / ˈ ɑːr b ɪ t r ɑː ʒ / , UK also /- t r ɪ dʒ / )

12348-494: The game 5 out of 5 stars. They commented: " Civilization is one of the highest dollar-to-play-ratio entertainments we've enjoyed. The scope is enormous, the strategies border on being limitless, the excitement is genuinely high, and the experience is worth every dime of the game's purchase price." Jim Trunzo reviewed Civilization in White Wolf #31 (May/June, 1992) and stated that " Civilization should have great appeal to

12495-657: The game during the Roman Republic , but decided against that due to the numerous other Roman games then on the market. In 1995, the renamed Holistic Design (HDI) and Microprose re-released it under the name Machiavelli the Prince . (Notwithstanding that Machiavelli was a Florentine and not a Venetian , the change was necessary owing to copyright issues.) Cities no longer accepted unlimited amounts of goods, particularly for high-value goods like relics and precious metals. The graphics were improved, along with aspects of

12642-477: The game emphasized trade and popularity over conquest or destroying enemies, Computer Gaming World stated in April 1994 that " Merchant Prince is a finely balanced, well presented, and intensely enjoyable game" with random maps and online play giving it "considerable replay value". In June 1994 it was a finalist for the magazine's Strategy Game of the Year award, losing to Master of Orion . The editors wrote that

12789-432: The game stood out among the Super NES's generally action-oriented library. In 1996, Computer Gaming World listed it as the best game of all time. In 2000, GameSpot rated Civilization as the tenth most influential video game of all time. It was also ranked at fourth place on IGN 's 2000 list of the top PC games of all time. In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted it as the 29th top retro game. In 2007, it

12936-545: The game's producer, and Meier coding and reworking the game to address these points, and otherwise without involvement of other MicroProse staff. During this period, Stealey and the other managers became concerned that this game did not fit MicroProse's general catalog as strategy computer games had not yet proven successful. A few months into the development, Stealey requested them to put the project on hold and complete Covert Action , after which they could go back to their new game. Meier and Shelley completed Covert Action which

13083-591: The idea of multiple smaller systems working together at the same time and the player having to manage them. Both Meier and Shelley recognized that the complex interactions between these systems led players to "make a lot of interesting decisions", and that ruling a whole civilization would readily work well with these underlying systems. Some time later, both discussed their love of the original Empire computer games, and Meier challenged Shelley to give him ten things he would change about Empire ; Shelley provided him with twelve. Around May 1990, Meier presented Shelley with

13230-586: The ignoble Fourth Crusade , or mirror the struggles of the Medicis , travels of Marco Polo , or precepts of Machiavelli . On historical maps, the rounding of Africa and assaults on Turkey , Persia , and India may be achieved by the players or AI ahead of the Portuguese , but there is no effect on the prosperity of Venice. The Hundred Years' War , Turco-Venetian wars , and Tatar invasions appear in minor form. Game mechanics push players into adopting

13377-409: The inefficiency is related to government tax policy, and hence is structural in nature, it has not been arbitraged away. However, many municipal bonds are callable, and this adds substantial risks to the strategy. A convertible bond is a bond that an investor can return to the issuing company in exchange for a predetermined number of shares in the company. A convertible bond can be thought of as

13524-465: The interface and gameplay innovations in this game eventually made their way into Civilization III and IV . Alpha Centauri is not actually a sequel to Civilization , despite beginning with the same event that ends Civilization and Civilization II : a crewed spacecraft from Earth arrives in the Alpha Centauri star system. Firaxis' 2014 game Civilization: Beyond Earth , although bearing

13671-399: The interface that (e.g.) permitted easier grouping of units, clarified the trade status of cities, and displayed the routes of long-distance ships. Ending the turn no longer required visiting Venice first. Machiavelli was released in two boxes: a thinner purple box with just the game and a thicker black box that included George Bull 's Penguin translation of Machiavelli's Prince . Out of

13818-494: The investment of proceeds of municipal bonds; these regulations, aimed at the issuers or beneficiaries of tax-exempt municipal bonds, are different and, instead, attempt to remove the issuer's ability to arbitrage between the low tax-exempt rate and a taxable investment rate. Generally, managers seek relative value opportunities by being both long and short municipal bonds with a duration-neutral book. The relative value trades may be between different issuers, different bonds issued by

13965-460: The leader traits. Brian Reynolds wrote Civ II in C++, and he didn't use them, either. We received no complaints about a Gandhi bug when either game came out, nor did we send out any revisions for one. Gandhi's military aggressiveness score remained at 1 throughout the game." He then explains the overflow error story was made up in 2012. It spread from there to a Wikia entry, then eventually to Reddit , and

14112-416: The map's size in half less than a month before Civilization 's release after playtesting revealed that the previous size was too large and made for boring and repetitive gameplay. Other automated features, like city management, were modified to require more player involvement. They also eliminated a secondary branch of the technology tree with minor skills like beer brewing , and spent time reworking

14259-436: The margin treatment is not identical, and the trader is accordingly required to post margin (faces a margin call ), the trader may run out of capital (if they run out of cash and cannot borrow more) and be forced to sell these assets at a loss even though the trades may be expected to ultimately make money. In effect, arbitrage traders synthesise a put option on their ability to finance themselves. Prices may diverge during

14406-448: The market, an investor could have such an opportunity: If the outcome from the valuation were the reverse case, the opposite positions would be taken in the bonds. This arbitrage opportunity comes from the assumption that the prices of bonds with the same properties will converge upon maturity. This can be explained through market efficiency, which states that arbitrage opportunities will eventually be discovered and corrected. The prices of

14553-575: The marketplace can also create risks during arbitrage transactions. As an example, if one was trying to profit from a price discrepancy between IBM on the NYSE and IBM on the London Stock Exchange, they may purchase a large number of shares on the NYSE and find that they cannot simultaneously sell on the LSE. This leaves the arbitrageur in an unhedged risk position. In the 1980s, risk arbitrage

14700-614: The middle period, up to the Apollo program , the United Nations , and the Manhattan Project in the modern era. Each wonder can only be built once in the world, and requires a lot of resources to build, far more than most other city buildings or units. Wonders provide unique benefits to the controlling civilization. For example, Magellan's Expedition increases the movement rate of naval units. Wonders typically affect either

14847-507: The most profitable course is to begin trading various commodities among the world's major cities. Trade is possible via small or large galleys (fast and nimble but frail in storms), small or large cogs (slow and unable to use small rivers but resistant to storms at sea), donkey teams (resistant to rockslides ), or camel caravans (resistant to sandstorms ). Up to 15 units may be purchased and used together. The commodities include Venetian glass , French wine (as " grog "), relics from

14994-519: The most profitable ventures in crypto . For very short amounts of time, the prices of two assets that are either fungible or related by a strict pricing relationship may temporarily go out of sync as the market makers are slow to update the prices. This momentary mispricing creates the opportunity for an arbitrageur to capture the difference between the two prices. For example, the price of calls and puts on an underlying should be related by put-call parity . If these prices are misquoted relative to

15141-495: The municipal yield curve allows participants to collect more after-tax income from the municipal bond portfolio than is spent on the interest rate swap; the carry is greater than the hedge expense. Positive, tax-free carry from muni arb can reach into the double digits. The bet in this municipal bond arbitrage is that, over a longer period of time, two similar instruments—municipal bonds and interest rate swaps—will correlate with each other; they are both very high quality credits, have

15288-452: The name of the main series, is a reimagining of Alpha Centauri running on the engine of Civilization V . A 1994 Computer Gaming World survey of space war games stated that "the lesson of this incredibly popular wargame has not been lost on the software community, and technological research popped up all over the place in 1993", citing Spaceward Ho! and Master of Orion as examples. That year MicroProse published Master of Magic ,

15435-466: The needed resources to finish the game. The management had also expressed issue with the lack of a firm completion date, as according to Shelley, Meier would consider a game completed only when he felt he had completed it. Eventually the two got the required help for publication, with Shelley overseeing these processes and Meier making the necessary coding changes. "One of my big rules has always been, 'double it, or cut it in half ' ", Meier wrote. He cut

15582-475: The non-linearity introduced by Meier's technology tree. To avoid any potential legal issues, MicroProse negotiated a license to use the Civilization name from Avalon Hill. The addition of Meier's name to the title was from a current practice established by Stealey to attach games like Civilization that diverged from MicroProse's past catalog to Meier's name, so that players that played Meier's combat simulators and recognized Meier's name would give these new games

15729-562: The original game - later debunked - is that a computer-controlled Gandhi , normally a highly peaceful leader, could become a nuclear warmonger if provoked. It was theorized that the game started Gandhi's "aggression value" at 1 out of a maximum 255 possible for an 8-bit unsigned integer , making a computer-controlled Gandhi tend to avoid armed conflict. However, once a civilization achieves democracy as its form of government, its leader's aggression value falls by 2. Under normal arithmetic principles, Gandhi's "1" would be reduced to "-1", but because

15876-421: The other. See rational pricing , particularly § arbitrage mechanics , for further discussion. Mathematically it is defined as follows: where V 0 = 0 {\displaystyle V_{0}=0} , V t {\displaystyle V_{t}} denotes the portfolio value at time  t and T is the time the portfolio ceases to be available on the market. This means that

16023-659: The outcome of the game and generally reflects the player's preferred style of gameplay. Players can also build Wonders of the World in each of the epochs of the game, subject only to obtaining the prerequisite knowledge. These wonders are important achievements of society, science, culture and defense, ranging from the Pyramids and the Great Wall in the Ancient age, to Copernicus' Observatory and Magellan's Expedition in

16170-590: The period: it is highly accurate close to Venice but grows much less so the further one goes. The mechanic has been praised by reviewers: "Though its gameplay was nowhere near as sophisticated as that of its near contemporary Civilization , Merchant Prince/Machiavelli did a better job of capturing what exploring is really like. Very rarely in the human experience are people pushing into an entirely blank unknown space. There are always rumors, always guesses, always some advice either from locals or past chronicles." The player must send out trade or military units to explore

16317-490: The player as it continued, creating a non-linear experience. Meier felt players would be able to use the technology tree to adopt a style of play and from which they could use technologies to barter with the other opponents. While the game relies on established recorded history, Meier admitted he did not spend much time in research, usually only to assure the proper chronology or spellings; Shelley noted that they wanted to design for fun, not accuracy, and that "Everything we needed

16464-461: The player so totally and to provide an interesting, unique outcome each and every time it's played." Civilization won the Origins Award in the category Best Military or Strategy Computer Game of 1991. A 1992 Computer Gaming World survey of wargames with modern settings gave the game five stars out of five, describing it as "more addictive than crack  ... so rich and textured that

16611-470: The player to be appointed as Venice's council head, general, admiral, or minister of construction. A family may only hold one office at a time, but any family with a senator must receive a post. Funds may be well-used or embezzled; those without access to the city's army may still hire large mercenary forces at the Campanile . The council head receives no funds but may try senators for treason. Support from

16758-403: The player's towns may be harassed by barbarians , units with no specific nationality and no named leader. These threats only come from huts, unclaimed land or sea, so that over time and turns of exploration, there are fewer and fewer places from which barbarians will emanate. Before the game begins, the player chooses which historical or current civilization to play. In contrast to later games in

16905-510: The player. "Though historically accurate", Meier said, "The moment the Krakatoa volcano blew up, or the bubonic plague came marching through, all anybody wanted to do was reload from a saved game ". Meier omitted multiplayer alliances because the computer used them too effectively, causing players to think that it was cheating. He said that by contrast, minefields and minesweepers caused the computer to do "stupid things ... If you've got

17052-466: The plotters and thinkers, those who like challenges on a global scale. 'Might makes right' addicts should stick to games less cerebral." Jeff Koke reviewed Civilization in Pyramid #2 (July/Aug., 1993), and stated that "Ultimately, there are games that are a lot flashier than Civilization , with cool graphics and animation, but there aren't many - or any - in my book that have the ability to absorb

17199-423: The pope (driving away pious traders), outbreaks of plague (which usually begin a decade or two into the game), and wartime. Trading under such conditions can be highly profitable but risky: plague may destroy one's trading units and they may be attacked by rival or renegade armies. All three games support automated trading routes, although the path selection and bugginess varies among the versions. The games begin in

17346-421: The present. In the present-value approach, the cash flows are discounted with one discount rate to find the price of the bond. In arbitrage-free pricing, multiple discount rates are used. The present-value approach assumes that the bond yield will stay the same until maturity. This is a simplified model because interest rates may fluctuate in the future, which in turn affects the yield on the bond. For this reason,

17493-432: The price at which no price arbitrage is possible. The idea of using multiple discount rates obtained from zero-coupon bonds and discounting a similar bond's cash flow to find its price is derived from the yield curve, which is a curve of the yields of the same bond with different maturities. This curve can be used to view trends in market expectations of how interest rates will move in the future. In arbitrage-free pricing of

17640-440: The price is calculated with a present-value pricing approach. Arbitrage-free pricing is used for bond valuation and to detect arbitrage opportunities for investors. For the purpose of valuing the price of a bond, its cash flows can each be thought of as packets of incremental cash flows with a large packet upon maturity, being the principal. Since the cash flows are dispersed throughout future periods, they must be discounted back to

17787-711: The put-call parity relationship, it provides an arbitrageur the opportunity to profit from the mispricing. Latency arbitrage is often mentioned especially in electronic processing in the financial field, where the use of fast server hardware allows an arbitrageur to realize opportunities that may exist for as little as nanoseconds. A study by the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom found that this practice generates as much as $ 5 billion per year in profit. Also called risk arbitrage , merger arbitrage generally consists of buying/holding

17934-399: The rare event of a large price move, this may yield a large loss. The principal risk, which is typically encountered on a routine basis, is classified as execution risk. This transpires when an aspect of the financial transaction does not materialize as anticipated. Infrequent, albeit critical, risks encompass counterparty and liquidity risks. The former, counterparty risk, is characterized by

18081-613: The release of Civilization II in 1996, Civilization had sold over 850,000 copies. By 2001, sales had reached 1 million copies. Shelley stated in a 2016 interview that Civilization had sold 1.5 million copies. In 2022, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Sid Meier’s Civilization to its World Video Game Hall of Fame . There have been several sequels to Civilization , including Civilization II (1996), Civilization III (2001), Civilization IV (2005), Civilization Revolution (2008), Civilization V (2010), and Civilization VI in 2016. In 1994, Meier produced

18228-474: The rights to publish it in the United States in 1981. There were at least two attempts to make a computerized version of Tresham's game prior to 1990. Danielle Bunten Berry planned to start work on the game after completing M.U.L.E. in 1983, and again in 1985, after completing The Seven Cities of Gold at Electronic Arts . In 1983 Bunten and producer Joe Ybarra opted to first do Seven Cities of Gold . The success of Seven Cities in 1985 in turn led to

18375-508: The risk that a counterparty fails to fulfill their side of a transaction. This is a serious problem if one has either a single trade or many related trades with a single counterparty, whose failure thus poses a threat, or in the event of a financial crisis when many counterparties fail. This hazard is serious because of the large quantities one must trade in order to make a profit on small price differences. For example, if one purchases many risky bonds, then hedges them with CDSes , profiting from

18522-502: The roles of playtester , game designer , and programmer. Meier and Shelley neared the end of their development and started presenting the game to the rest of MicroProse for feedback towards publication. This process was slowed by the current vice president of development, who had taken over Meier's former position at the company. This vice president did not receive any financial bonuses for successful publication of Meier's games due to Meier's contract terms, forgoing any incentive to provide

18669-449: The same entity, or capital structure trades referencing the same asset (in the case of revenue bonds). Managers aim to capture the inefficiencies arising from the heavy participation of non-economic investors (i.e., high income " buy and hold " investors seeking tax-exempt income) as well as the "crossover buying" arising from corporations' or individuals' changing income tax situations (i.e., insurers switching their munis for corporates after

18816-408: The same maturity and are denominated in the same currency. Credit risk and duration risk are largely eliminated in this strategy. However, basis risk arises from use of an imperfect hedge, which results in significant, but range-bound principal volatility. The end goal is to limit this principal volatility, eliminating its relevance over time as the high, consistent, tax-free cash flow accumulates. Since

18963-535: The same price in another. Traders may, for example, find that the price of wheat is lower in agricultural regions than in cities, purchase the good, and transport it to another region to sell at a higher price. This type of price arbitrage is the most common, but this simple example ignores the cost of transport, storage, risk, and other factors. "True" arbitrage requires that there is no market risk involved. Where securities are traded on more than one exchange, arbitrage occurs by simultaneously buying in one and selling on

19110-417: The stock of a company that is the target of a takeover while shorting the stock of the acquiring company. Usually, the market price of the target company is less than the price offered by the acquiring company. The spread between these two prices depends mainly on the probability and the timing of the takeover being completed as well as the prevailing level of interest rates. The bet in a merger arbitrage

19257-425: The successes of Silent Service , Sid Meier's Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon . Civilization has sold 1.5 million copies since its release and is considered one of the most influential computer games in history due to its establishment of the 4X genre. In addition to its commercial and critical success, the game has been deemed pedagogically valuable due to its presentation of historical relationships, and one of

19404-470: The title, though interest in the game through word-of-mouth helped to boost sales. Following the release on the IBM PC, the game was ported to other platforms; Meier and Shelley provided this code to contractors hired by MicroProse to complete the ports. Civilization was released with only single-player support, with the player working against multiple computer opponents. In 1991, Internet or online gaming

19551-469: The units further resistant to disasters or weakened opponents. Players who wanted to focus on trade could disable this feature and play with the units of the earlier games. Merchant Prince II attempted to allow simultaneous movement in multiplayer games but the option was notoriously buggy. A patch (v.1.1) was also released to fix several bugs, particularly with its TCP/IP multiplayer mode. Merchant Prince offered three multiplayer options: taking turns at

19698-410: The value is an 8-bit unsigned integer, it supposedly wraps around to "255", causing Gandhi to suddenly become the most aggressive opponent in the game. Interviewed in 2019, developer Brian Reynolds said with "99.99% certainty" that this story was apocryphal, recalling Gandhi's coded aggression level as being no lower than other peaceful leaders in the game, and doubting that a wraparound would have had

19845-520: The value of the portfolio is never negative, and guaranteed to be positive at least once over its lifetime. Negative, or anti-, arbitrage is similarly defined as and occurs naturally in arbitrage relations as the seller view as opposed to the buyer view. Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices in different markets to converge. As a result of arbitrage, the currency exchange rates and the prices of securities and other financial assets in different markets tend to converge. The speed at which they do so

19992-466: The wheel is developed, and the granary building becomes available to build after pottery is developed. The whole system of advancements from beginning to end is called the technology tree , or simply the Tech tree; this concept has been adopted in many other strategy games. Since only one tech may be "researched" at any given time, the order in which technologies are chosen makes a considerable difference in

20139-428: The world, facing pirates, brigands, and storms at sea and in the desert, or negotiate with the other families to purchase more accurate maps from them. Many cities are initially closed to foreign traders and their leaders must be bribed or forcibly removed to open them to trade. Defeating a city with Venice's armed forces or one's own mercenaries permits one to control it (closing it to rivals) or to negotiate its status as

20286-441: The year 1300. The default is for them to end in AD 1400, but they may be set to end after 15, 30, 60, 150, or 192 years as well. The manual includes an overview and glossary of this period and incorporates aspects of the era both directly and through game mechanics. The Venetian–Genoese Wars , corsairs , Black Plague , condottieri , and indulgences appear and the players' actions may instigate an early Reformation , recreate

20433-427: Was common. In this form of speculation , one trades a security that is clearly undervalued or overvalued, when it is seen that the wrong valuation is about to be corrected. The standard example is the stock of a company, undervalued in the stock market, which is about to be the object of a takeover bid; the price of the takeover will more truly reflect the value of the company, giving a large profit to those who bought at

20580-471: Was developed for the IBM PC platform, which at the time had support for both 16-color EGA to 256-color VGA ; Meier opted to support both 16-color and 256-color graphics to allow the game to run on both EGA/Tandy and VGA/MCGA systems. "I’ve never been able to decide if it was a mistake to keep Civ isolated as long as I did", Meier wrote; while "as many eyes as possible" are beneficial during development, Meier and Shelley worked very quickly together, combining

20727-472: Was named one of the 16 most influential games in history at a German technology and games trade show Telespiele. In Poland, it was included in the retrospective lists of the best Amiga games by Wirtualna Polska (ranked ninth) and CHIP (ranked fifth). In 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time. In 1994, PC Gamer US named Civilization the second best computer game ever. The editors wrote, "The depth of strategies possible

20874-528: Was not an official employee of MicroProse but worked under contract where the company paid him upfront for game development, a large payment on delivery of the game, and additional royalties on each game of his sold. MicroProse had hired a number of Avalon Hill game designers, including Bruce Shelley . Among other works, Shelley had been responsible for adapting the railroad-based 1829 board game developed by Tresham into 1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons . Shelley had joined MicroProse finding that

21021-401: Was picked up by news sites like Kotaku and Geek.com . The story may have originated from the fact that 2010's Civilization V was deliberately written with Gandhi having an affinity for nuclear weapons, added as a joke by developer Jon Shafer . The misinformation around this bug led to the meme known as " Nuclear Gandhi ". Another relic of Civilization was the nature of combat where

21168-446: Was pretty much available in the children’s section of the library." Computer Gaming World reported in 1994 that "Sid Meier has stated on numerous occasions that he emphasizes the 'fun parts' of a simulation and throws out the rest". Meier described the process as "Add another bit [of clay]—no, that went too far. Scrape it off". He eliminated the potential for any civilization to fall on its own , believing this would be punishing to

21315-545: Was published in 1990. Once Covert Action was released, Meier and Shelley returned to the prototype. The time away from the project allowed them to recognize that the real-time aspect was not working well, and reworked the game to become turn-based and dropped the zoning aspect, a change that Meier described as "like tossing the clay in the trash and getting a new lump". They incorporated elements of city management and military aspect from Empire , including creating individual military units as well as settler units that replaced

21462-416: Was seen as a side effort with little risk, they were able to innovate new ideas into Civilization II . As a net result, CivNet was generally overshadowed by Civilization II which was released in the following year. Civilization 's critical success created a "golden period of MicroProse" where there was more potential for similar strategy games to succeed, according to Meier. This put stress on

21609-448: Was still in its infancy, so this option was not considered in Civilization 's release. Over the next few years, as home Internet accessibility took off, MicroProse looked to develop an online version of Civilization . This led to the 1995 release of Sid Meier's CivNet . CivNet allowed for up to seven players to play the game, with computer opponents available to obtain up to six active civilizations. Games could be played either on

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