and in the first one, a 50% chance that your declaration of war would be overruled by congress, to represent the peaceful nature of dEmOcRaCy
ive always kinda wanted to write a bit of an essay on the intense liberal ideology baked into almost every facet of the civ series (and not just its laughable 'government types'), but never quite got around to it. theres so much, down to how nomadic and non-urban peoples are 'barbarians' to be destroyed so their land can be properly tamed, to the linear flow of technological and social progress as represented by government-allocated beakers or whatever, to even just the conception of the city as the atomic unit of human societal organisation, etc etc etc. and of course the complete lack of any vision of the future or 'victory' beyond either military or soft-power conquest of the globe, or liberal democracy in space for no discernible reason, like it cant even conceive of any greater goal for humanity, like it might as well be francis fukuyamas civilization
funnily enough, the imperialism games, especially imperialism 2, are very fun and much more honest about what they are
but yeah the civ games certainly work as ruling class sims and i do still love them, especially when they embrace their board-gamey origins and dont try too hard for rEaLiSm