This one is a genuine question about the word rather than about the game that took its name.
Short answer
The short definition is a complex society with cities, division of labour and lasting institutions — everything else is detail about which of those matter most.
- Institutions that outlast the individuals running them.
- Specialised work — craft, administration, priesthood, trade.
- Keep a save or backup from before you start — it costs nothing and occasionally saves an evening.
Each Civilization entry reshuffles the rules enough that habits from the last one quietly stop working. In everyday use it often means simply "a large historical society", which is looser than the academic sense. Historians treat it as a description of scale and organisation rather than of merit.
What separates it from a society or a culture
Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. The term has a difficult history: it has been used to rank societies, and that use is now widely rejected. Archaeology tends to look for cities, surplus food and record-keeping as practical markers. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later.
The word entered English from Latin by way of French, and its older sense was closer to "making civil". Dictionaries agree on the core and differ on the edges, which is why several definitions circulate. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds.
How it is used today
The strategy game borrowed the word, which is why searches for it return two very different kinds of result. The plural is regular, and both the singular and plural are common in ordinary writing. None of this needs a paid tool, a third-party launcher or an account on a site you have never heard of.
- Cities and permanent settlement rather than seasonal movement.
- Monumental building, which tends to follow from the rest.
- Read the whole sequence once before doing the first step.
- Some form of record-keeping, usually but not always writing.
- A food surplus that frees people from producing their own.
Where the word comes from
The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.
Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep.
The short definition
It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows.
Everything below is framed around the current state of Civilization rather than a launch-week impression. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over.
Why the definition is argued over
Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time.
Where people go wrong
- Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.
- Skipping the prerequisite because it looked optional in someone else's summary.
- Grinding a method that was patched months ago because a thread still ranks well.
Civ FAQ
What is the simplest definition?
A large, settled society with cities, specialised work and lasting institutions. Everything beyond that is a matter of emphasis.
Is it the same as culture?
No. Culture is shared practice and meaning, and every group has one. This word describes a particular scale and kind of organisation.
Does this work the same on console and PC?
The logic is identical. Menu paths and button prompts differ, and any real difference is flagged above.
Do I need any mods or third-party tools for this?
No. Everything described here works with the base game on any supported platform.
Work through it in the order above and definition for kids stops being a question you have to look up again.