Development History

Firaxis Games made Civilization 4, led by Soren Johnson as lead designer and AI programmer, with Barry Caudill as senior producer and Sid Meier as Director of Creative Development; 2K Games published it on Oct 25, 2005 after Take-Two bought the Civilization franchise in Jan 2005, and Take-Two bought Firaxis itself in Nov 2005.

Firaxis Games made Civilization 4: Soren Johnson was its lead designer and AI programmer, Barry Caudill its senior producer and Sid Meier, the series' creator, its Director of Creative Development, and 2K Games published it in North America on Oct 25, 2005. Take-Two had bought "certain rights" to the Civilization franchise on Jan 26, 2005 and bought Firaxis outright on Nov 7, 2005, two weeks after the game shipped. The team rebuilt the game from a new codebase on Emergent's Gamebryo engine, made it multiplayer first, put its rules in XML and Python so players could change them, and hired Leonard Nimoy to narrate. Johnson tells the story from his side on Soren Johnson, and the game's dates are on Release History.

The Civilization IV logo from 2K's page: the word Civilization in gold letters over a large stone numeral IV. Firaxis Games and 2K

Quick facts

Developer	Firaxis Games, founded in 1996 by Jeff Briggs
Publisher	2K Games (Take-Two), after the franchise deal of Jan 26, 2005
Lead designer and AI programmer	Soren Johnson (manual credits)
Senior producer	Barry Caudill; producers Jesse Smith and Dan Magaha
Lead programmer	Mustafa Thamer
Lead artist	Steve Ogden
Sid Meier	Director of Creative Development (2K, Oct 25, 2005); "Chief Creative Officer" in the manual's credits
Engine	Gamebryo (Emergent Game Technologies, Oct 4, 2005)
Narrator	Leonard Nimoy
Main theme	"Baba Yetu" by Christopher Tin
Released	Oct 25, 2005 (North America) and Nov 4, 2005 (Europe)

Source for the credits: Civilization IV manual, credits, pp. 216-220.

Who made it

Civilization 4 was designed by Soren Johnson, who had co-designed Civilization 3 and, on his own site, describes himself as "project lead and lead designer of Civilization 4", who also "wrote the game/AI code again, this time from scratch" (Soren Johnson, About). The manual credits him as "Lead Designer and AI Programmer" and Sid Meier as "Original Creator of Civilization" (Civilization IV manual, p. 216). In 2K's launch release, Meier, then "Director of Creative Development at FIRAXIS Games", said "Creating Civilization IV was a monumental task", and Jeff Briggs, Firaxis's founder, president and CEO, said "The Civilization series is very close to our hearts" (2K Games, Oct 25, 2005).

Barry Caudill ran production. GameSpot introduced him as "the game's senior producer" in Aug 2005, and he signed 2K's pre-launch developer blog as "Senior Producer, CIVILIZATION IV, FIRAXIS GAMES" (2K Games blog, Sep 15, 2005). In his afterword Johnson credits "Our two producers, Barry Caudill and Jesse Smith" with shipping "this colossus of a product on time", and names the leads around him: Mustafa Thamer (lead programmer), Steve Ogden (lead artist), Dorian Newcomb (lead animator), Tim McCracken (QA manager, with "some 20 testers split between opposite coasts") and Paul Murphy, the writer, noting that "not many games top 100,000 lines of text" (Civilization IV manual, "Afterwords", pp. 183-184).

Starting from scratch

Johnson's rule was that nothing carried over by default. "We weren't going to adopt anything from the previous games by default," he told PC Gamer in 2020; "it meant that I was going to start from scratch and re-evaluate everything." His afterword, signed Sep 5, 2005, says the same: "The codebase began from scratch", and "everything in the design was up for grabs" (Civilization IV manual, p. 175). Out went city riots, pollution, and corruption and waste ("never coded them to begin with"); in came production overflow, city maintenance, stronger specialists feeding Great People, civics in place of governments, a tech tree with "or" prerequisites, religions with Missionaries, and one Strength value per unit with promotions (pp. 176-183). The reasons for each are on Soren Johnson, Economy and Combat.

Sid Meier described the same discipline from the other side. With Civ 4, he told Gamasutra in 2007, the team "tried to take something out with every new thing we put in", because they felt players were near the limit of what they could follow.

Built as a multiplayer game

Civ 4 was played as a multiplayer game before it was a single-player one. "We also built it, initially, as a multiplayer game, not as a singleplayer game. So we knew that every system worked in multiplayer," Johnson told PC Gamer, adding that "We were playing multiplayer games during the first two or three months of development" in weekly sessions. His afterword credits Dan McGarry with the multiplayer code and says "Emphasizing multi-player so early in the process really paid off" (Civilization IV manual, p. 185). The game shipped with LAN, Internet, Play-By-Email and Hotseat play (2K Games, Oct 25, 2005); how it is played online today is on Multiplayer.

Johnson later presented the prototype itself at GDC 2006 in a talk titled "Play Early, Play Often: Prototyping Civ 4", listed on his site's presentations page. The prototype already had its music: Johnson says he chose "The Rainmaker", a track by the Stanford a cappella group Talisman, for the prototype's intro, which is how Baba Yetu came to be written (Soren Johnson, Oct 16, 2008).

A change of publisher

The game changed hands while it was being made. PC Gamer reports that "Halfway through development, the game was dropped by its publisher and sold to Take-Two" (PC Gamer, 2020). Take-Two's release of Jan 26, 2005 announced the franchise purchase and a long-term publishing deal with Firaxis, set the game for "late 2005" under the 2K Games label, and already promised add-ons made "using the standard Python and XML scripting languages". Take-Two then bought Firaxis on Nov 7, 2005; its 2008 annual report puts the total price at $15,442 thousand.

The game shipped early. In Aug 2005 GameSpot said it was "in testing and balancing for its November ship"; its review of Oct 26, 2005 noted that "the ship date was moved up almost a full month", which left the Pitboss server and the SDK for later (see Patches and Updates).

The first 3D Civilization

Civ 4 was the series' first 3D game, built on Gamebryo. Emergent Game Technologies announced on Oct 4, 2005 that the game "was built using Emergent's Gamebryo engine technology", which Firaxis had already used for Sid Meier's Pirates!. 2K's launch release called it "a full 3D engine", a first for Civilization (2K Games, Oct 25, 2005). Johnson's afterword credits Tom Whittaker with leading "the effort to create the first ever 3D Civilization", Bart Muzzin with the animation system for units made of several figures, Nat Duca with "The epic globe view" and the city detail, and Jason Winokur with the free camera (Civilization IV manual, p. 184).

The grid stayed square, after an argument. "It was actually a big fight between me and the artists for how the grid system would work. The 3D system in Civ IV is like a chessboard," Johnson told PC Gamer, because a diagonal board makes distances confusing; hexes were not tried because "We were a bit afraid of hexes at the time." Civilization 5 moved to hexes, as Civilization 4 vs 5, 6 and 7 explains.

Built to be modded

Moddability was a stated goal from the start. "Our goal is to make this the most moddable version of Civ ever, so we created three levels of tools," Caudill wrote on Sep 20, 2005: the World Builder, Python and XML, and a software development kit. "The Python scripting language is fully integrated throughout the game", every interface screen is exposed to it, and Firaxis used Python to generate its own random maps. Johnson's afterword thanks Mustafa Thamer for making "a standalone game core DLL" work, Jon Shafer for building modding infrastructure with him, and Eric MacDonald, maker of the World Builder, for convincing the team "that XML was the best way to store data" (Civilization IV manual, pp. 183-185).

The game shipped "with additional custom scenarios and three fan-made modifications", GameSpot noted in its review, and the SDK with the game core's source code followed in 2006. What players built with it is on Mods.

Fans in the test team

Civ 4 was tested by the community from early in the project. Johnson writes that Firaxis "assembled a crack team of the best Civ players in the world" from the Apolyton and CivFanatics fan sites, in single-player, multiplayer and modding groups led by Sirian, Friedrich Psitalon and Isak, a group that "grew slowly from 10 to 20 to 50 and more" (Civilization IV manual, "Afterwords", p. 187). Some testers joined the team: Alex Mantzaris and Jon Shafer, known as Alexman and Trip; Bob Thomas (Sirian) redesigned the map script system and made scripts such as Great Plains and Oasis; Michael Soracoe (Sulla) joined the on-site testers. The modders Rhye, Locutus and Dale built release scenarios with Isak "to stress our system".

Voice and music

Leonard Nimoy narrates the game "at the beginning of every new game and each time you research a new technology", reading a quotation for each, and GameSpot listed him among the game's good points (GameSpot, Oct 26, 2005). IGN praised his "pitch-perfect voiceover assist" (IGN, Oct 21, 2005). The manual's credits list Nimoy as narrator and the composers as Jeffery L. Briggs, Mark Cromer, Michael Curran and Christopher Tin, along with John Adams and classical composers from Allegri and Bach to Palestrina, with vocals by Talisman (Civilization IV manual, p. 217). Johnson writes that Briggs and Cromer "worked together to create the hours of original music filling the game". Tin's theme, "Baba Yetu", later won a Grammy; its story is on Baba Yetu.

The expansion teams

The expansions were made by the same studio with new leads. The Warlords manual's credits name Jesse Smith as producer, Alex Mantzaris as lead programmer, and Mantzaris, Tim McCracken, Paul Murphy, Ed Piper, Jon Shafer and Smith as designers; Warlords came out on Jul 24, 2006. Johnson left Firaxis on Apr 2, 2007 to work on Spore. "Alex Mantzaris and Jon Shafer were credited as lead designers" of Beyond the Sword (Game Developer, Jun 9, 2008), whose credits also list Dorian Newcomb as lead artist and the modders Sirian, Dale, Derek "Kael" Paxton and Rhye as design consultants (Beyond the Sword manual, p. 53). 2K said Colonization was made by "the team behind Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword" (Game Developer, Jun 9, 2008). Shafer went on to lead Civilization 5, whose development "started in early 2007" (PC Gamer). How the game was received is on Reception and Awards.

Frequently asked questions

Who made Civilization 4? Civilization 4 was made by Firaxis Games and published by 2K Games on Oct 25, 2005. Soren Johnson was lead designer and AI programmer, Barry Caudill senior producer and Sid Meier Director of Creative Development.

Who was the lead designer of Civ 4? Soren Johnson was Civilization 4's lead designer and wrote its game and AI code, according to his own site and the manual's credits. Alex Mantzaris and Jon Shafer led the design of Beyond the Sword.

What engine does Civ 4 use? Civilization 4 runs on Emergent Game Technologies' Gamebryo engine, as Emergent announced on Oct 4, 2005. It was the first 3D game in the series, with game rules in XML and Python on top.

Who is the narrator in Civ 4? Leonard Nimoy narrates Civilization 4, reading a quotation at the start of every game and for each technology you research (GameSpot). GameSpot listed his narration among the game's good points.

Who published Civilization 4? 2K Games, Take-Two's label, published Civilization 4 after Take-Two bought rights to the Civilization franchise on Jan 26, 2005. Take-Two bought Firaxis itself on Nov 7, 2005.

Did Sid Meier design Civ 4? No: Sid Meier created the Civilization series, but Civilization 4 was designed by Soren Johnson. Meier was Firaxis's Director of Creative Development in 2005 and is credited as "Original Creator of Civilization".