Civilization IV The Complete Edition: Unboxing

Yeah, it’s not nearly as interesting as the interior of Civilization: Chronicles (Fry’s was selling this edition for $20 as recently as three months ago, I could KICK myself for not getting it), but this week I spied Civilization IV: Complete on the shelves of Fry’s for the small debut discount price of $32.99, and I finally couldn’t resist, I bought it. Over the past four years, Civ IV has been lauded and enjoyed by millions of players, and I’ve avoided it because I couldn’t get myself to buy the game, the two expansions, do the old online patch hunt, and grayly-legal DRM remval. What Civ IV: Complete promises is a fully tried and patched game, complete with all available expansions and hand-selected fan mods for the most moddable Civ game ever. What finally swung me on this edition was a little decal on the back of the package: “DRM Free.” So, doctorfrog is having his first swing at Civ… as soon as he clears a few other items from his Games Queue…

For those who like such things, I’ve included a few photos of the interior of the DVD case for this edition. It’s not a huge thrill, but it includes a DRM-free DVD that can be easily copied and archived for legal personal use, a printed quickstart guide (and four huge game manuals in PDF form on the disc), and a small poster-sized, two-sided tech tree. (Manual and tech tree available for download here.) All told, it’s the bare minimum of what you’d expect from a Civ game pack-in, but it’s shiny enough and has that new-game smell:

Cover shot

Interior of cover

Nice shiny disc and manual

The ‘pack-ins.’ Short quick-start manual (I would prefer a novel-sized manual, but ok), and small tech tree poster.

Obverse of the tech tree poster.

Front of tech tree poster. I love these things.

Verifying that this is indeed the Civ IV Complete tech tree poster.

Actually, the only other Civ game I’ve played is the massively wonderful Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (really a Brian Reynolds design), and what I really, really, really want from Civ developer Firaxis is a true sequel to the original SMAC. Plotting the future of mankind on a hostile alien world really beats the idea of a board-game like approach to sort-of retelling humanity’s past in Civ (Rhye’s of Civilization notwithstanding). Let’s hope they get cracking on that sometime soon!

Dave Simon tears into Old and New Journalism

On The Media, one of my favorite radio shows and podcasts, frequently documents the current decline in the quality and coverage of news in the United States, which has of course, coincided with the one-two punch of the rise of the free-information demand economy of the Internet, and the shameful domination of news media by corporations who require that their news outfits behave like little corporate fiefdoms themselves, focused entirely on consumer demographics, sales, and money.

Sorry for the long sentence, but the state of things is equally ridiculous. This week, the completely wonderful Brooke Gladstone edited in the most interesting bits of a senate committee on the “Future of Journalism.”

Dave Simon, journalist, author of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, and perhaps most famously known as the co-creator of the only honest police procedural ever, The Wire, tore into the pretense of things with the calm but damning precision he’s brought to his near-documentary television series:

“From the captains of the newspaper industry you may hear a certain martyrology, a claim that they were heroically serving democracy, only to be undone by a cataclysmic shift in technology.

“From those speaking on behalf of new media, Web blogs and that which goes Twitter, you will be treated to assurances that American journalism has a perfectly fine future online and that a great democratization is taking place. Well, a plague on both their houses.”

And:

“High end journalism is dying in America, and unless a new economic model is achieved it will not be reborn on the Web, or anywhere else. The Internet is a marvelous tool, and clearly it is the information delivery system of our future. But thus far it does not deliver much first generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth.” (emphasis mine. a sense of irony also mine.)

He even rips a little into Ariana Huffington, which is worthy alone of listening, regardless of which wing, if any, you admit to leaning towards.

Read or listen to this segment on OnTheMedia.org. And support the program or your local NPR/PBS/PRI affiliate if you can.

Endnote: Dave Simon also recently appeared on Bill Moyers Journal, in an hour long interview certainly worth watching as well. Seek it out here. I’m still waiting for them to publish their showing of Sam Waterston performing impressions of Abraham Lincoln on the Internet as well.