Civilization Iv – Democracy Game

Firstly, for those who don’t know, Civilization IV is a strategic turn-based strategy game where you, the player, control the fate of an entire nation. You lead it from its humble foundations as a single tribe, all the way through civilization, to a mighty empire.

If you are looking at this article though, you probably already know that. What you are wondering now, is what is a Democracy Game?

A democracy game is one played with a group of friends, whom each have equal say in how the game is played. There is only one require elected position (the Designated Player) but other positions may rise, depending upon how you and your friends want to play. You could have a very orderly online democracy, with a constitution, other positions, and direct popular elections. Or you could decide who is the designated player based upon a weekly game of ‘quarters’.

The game is very fun and social, and could easily be a weekly item for young people of similar interests. Maybe your ‘Town Hall’ meeting is scheduled before your murder mystery, or before your weekly D&D campaign.

However, there is plenty more things you can do to make it interesting. I just recently started a Democracy Game using the Fall From Heaven Modpack, which transforms the whole game into a fantasy experience. Thus after voting on what race/nation we wanted to be, we chose Elves, ad now we’ve effectively combined our D&D and Civilization Experience!

We’ve become quite advanced with the concept, and now have an RP economy, a blog that serves as a newspaper, and we even sell advertising on the blog for in-game currency! Its quite vibrant!

Thus you can see, the possibilities are limitless!

Chris Patrick is a writer and amateur game designer. You can check out his website here. If you are interested to see his Democracy Game in action, you can check out the Innsmouth Chronicle, which is the newspaper. If you want to join in the game, the Chronicle has my contact information!