Civilization Battles Royale
May 20, 2021 9:37 PM   Subscribe

The Civilization Battle Royale Mark II was an alternate history of the planet narrated from August 2015 to December 2018, first by "TPangolin" and later by team "Blue Cassette," based on a game of Civilization V (previously) with 61 different computer-controlled civilizations and no* human players. Also available in audio form.

Possibly the most notorious single game of Civ since Civ II's Endless War, appearing in the Guinness Book of World records, and predating the cultural dominance of PUBG and Fortnite by a couple years, the Battle Royale Mark II required 120 image albums (the finale on this separate site for some reason) before
one leaderBrazil
eventually conquered the entire planet. Seventeen of the civilizations and their leaders were official parts of the game, while the other forty-four were fanmade mods.

The alternate history understandably spawned a trove of alternate historical fiction, including an official novelization, as well as all sorts of other community content and even a stock exchange for betting on who would ultimately conquer the cylinder (not a globe).

The Mark II, understandably, followed the Mark I, which was abandoned after "only" 19 episodes due to technical difficulties. A successor, Civilization Battle Royale X Season 1, ran from June 2019 to July 2020 until the remaining civilizations all seemed to give up on fighting, and X Season 2 is ongoing. Many more AI-only games also exist on YouTube, sped up and on smaller maps and without the narration. The format was eventually canonized when Firaxis streamed an official AI battle royale game in Civilization VI as a final promotional effort two days before Civ VI was released.

*Technically it's impossible to have a Civ V game with no human player, so TPangolin chose Babylon (normally one of the most powerful civilizations, due to its advantages in research) and gave himself a nuclear submarine hidden under some icebergs for minimal contact with the rest of the world.
posted by one for the books (4 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
...nuclear submarine hidden under some icebergs...

Has anybody checked under our own icebergs lately?
posted by solarion at 3:37 AM on May 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


Has anybody checked under our own icebergs lately?

We’re in the process of melting them so we can get a look.
posted by jmauro at 9:55 AM on May 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


How on Earth are the AIs cranking out so many units? Are they using some mod that lowers the cost of units? Or am I just really bad at playing Civ?

Also, how large is this map compared to the "standard" size? It feels pretty huge.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:21 AM on May 22, 2021


Sydney had it coming.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:11 PM on May 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


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