Sid Meier and the meaning of ‘Civilization’
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Edit: wow, it spawned an entire subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/
It wasn't too difficult to stay ahead of the pollution curve in the late game as long as you didn't have a war. But there was one memorable game where I had a massive nuclear exchange with Gandhi. Created too much pollution. The world become a wasteland because I couldn't clean it up in time. And the AI didn't clean anything on its own, iirc. I won the game, but it was such a Pyrrhic victory.
This was probably 29 years ago. Playing obsessively on my old Mac LC. Still remember it because it was the saddest game session I've ever had. I won, but there wasn't much left at the end. Broken cities and the earth was dead.
Don't remember if there was nuclear winter as well.
Global warming resulted from not cleaning up pollution. Then the tiles would change irreversibly.
But today I learned I've never really played Civ
You couldn't see as much of the world at once, and units and terrain became more difficult to discern.
I wound up playing in the strategic overlay, with mods that relieved some of the claustrophobia, but it never felt as slick as the earlier 2D / isomorphic view.
Other classic strategy games from that era followed the trend, favoring to showcase gorgeously detailed models enabled by their new 3D engines, over equipping you with a clever and efficient UI to conquer the world.
Anyone care to recommend a favorite turn-based strategy game with a pleasant interface which you think I might enjoy?
The Civilization board game was similarly boring. Most of the time there were no wars, and everybody was just trading and dealing with disasters and barbarians.
The 3d art just looks like a console game aesthetic - it's extremely kitschy - I guess I'm just not in the target demographic.
Maybe there could be a "Civ for adults". With just way less content, shorter games and a more mature art style.
Civ 1 didn't have: culture, religion, great persons, great works, armies, ranged units, luxuries, strategic resources, building placement, unit xp/promotion. Civ 1 didn't even have an improvement for forest tiles.
Civ 1 did have as extra: home city for units. Marine units had to be transported by ship - but that added an interesting mechanic, you had to protect your super important transport loaded with 7 very expensive units. Terrain improvements took a really long time so you had to have multiple settlers work on the same tile. Some superfluous things like fortresses. Small city spam ruined Civ 1.
However, if you want, you can play very war like, or avoid war quite well. Snowballing early with a push is a viable strategy.
Rushing tech to get the first cannon and pushing then as well.
It depends on what civilization and what special units and buildings you have.
Which one? There are at least two different ones, with the same name, based on the computer game franchise. (And, of course, the Avalon Hill game predating the computer game, but that doesn’t seem relevant.)
RTS games even today limit players to ~200 pop each.
You are still playing with low 1000s of units, and this has been the case for a decade. The AI is also not really much better.
Even on strategy map level it has been simplified.
Civilization is on the easier / simpler end of 4X / Strategy... and believe me, this is a good thing!! Things get really complicated. Paradox games (Victoria, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universialis) are the "complicated" games, technically realtime but the underlying simulations "feel" turnbased. (Hearts of Iron progresses the simulation in 1-hour increments. They're "realtime" only because it'd be too boring to hit "next turn" so often, but you can hit the pause button and really think about a situation at say: September 1st 1939 @ 1pm if something terrible is going on)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also a strategy game: war, tactics, resources, diplomacy, etc. etc. The elements you'd expect.
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"Tactics" games that focus on a singular battle as the core gameplay loop. Fire Emblem, Wesnoth, Wargroove, Advance Wars, Heroes of Might and Magic, Panzer General, Starcraft, Age of Empires.
"Strategy" games approximate the battles and focus on larger scale elements.
A good rule of thumb is that Strategy Games have an element of siege and supply lines, while Tactics games often just "teleport" the resources where needed. Tactics are about maneuvering your troops to get an advantage, Strategy is about finding / securing resources (ex: placing your defensive Pikeman on the enemy's mine in Civ2, or in their districts in Civ6)
Civ leans towards the simpler/tactics side, but is just barely enough "Strategy" that I'd group it in the strategy side of things.
Wargroove's AI is a bit dumb compared to Adv. War's Days of Ruin however. The game really shines as a competitive player-vs-player setting. But if you're not used to the mechanics of Adv. Wars, you probably need the easier AI to learn how quirks of Adv. Wars style / Wargroove style play.
Nintendo is remaking Advance Wars 1 and Advance Wars 2 ("Reboot Camp") for the Switch. I'll be revisiting these originals-remakes as they come out in a few months. I remember the CO-powers being incredibly overpowering (while Wargroove's special "grooves" are quite powerful as they are, they are no where on the level of CO-powers or CO-superpowers of the original).
Civ I’d say (while relatively simple in most versions) is very much on the strategy side. While maneuvering units in the battle theater matters, wars are mostly won or lost by the tech and economics and diplomatic situation going in, and the timing of the decisions to start and end the war.
Civ5 and Civ6 has moved more tactical. I'm spending more and more time thinking about where to place units, because they no longer "stack up" with each other. Collision detection for the human means that I need to put more effort into deciding where to move and place my units.
Yeah yeah yeah, people were confused about "stack kills" in Civ1/2/3, and without stack-kills, Civ4 combat grew dull. So maybe removing stacks all together was a solution (the current direction for Civ5 and Civ6).
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Somewhere along the line, combat was no longer a guaranteed killer. (Civ1/2 was definitely a "win you live, lose you die" for every combat). Civ6, now I'm thinking about movement points, where to retreat to, how to save up HP again and recover, whether or not I can cutoff the opponent's retreat. These are more tactical elements.
I feel like Civ6 has pushed "strategy" through its government card system, which is pretty abstract (Oh, you just got a new government card! Time for a new war! I'm going to equip +100% pillage bonus and +4 Strength bonus). A lot of Civ6 is about abusing the multiplicative bonuses of these cards at the right timing.
>The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived.
Oddly, the best games to bear his imprimatur, Civ II, and (by far) Alpha Centauri, were not headed by Meier. It does seem like games, of all things, would have the potential to be at their greatest under the vision of a single author, but history has shown the opposite (many times, after designers of successful games go on to head their own projects with total control, the results fall short of their predecessors). Part of this might have to do with the possibility space of game states (far too great for a single person to test, explore, or even conceive of), and also the complexity involved in programming a complete game. However, another explanation is that it is still possible to achieve greatness via that approach, and we merely have not had any genius game designers so far.
(Of course over time things strayed too far from the original vision, and the result is the post-ENT crapfest that carries the official "Star Trek" name, but is otherwise a generic action movie franchise. A strange situation, in which the only work still sticking to the deep and hopeful vision of the future is the little animated show that everyone thought will be a joke.)
So here's me hoping that in 5-10 years time, I'll fall into their "target audience" window and they'll make an inspiring, positive show for people like me.
I'm also pissed about the Borg subplot - in the trailer and initial episodes, they set up the scene for some amazing drama and deep storytelling, and then they just literally crashed it into a planet and discarded like space trash. It was a huge letdown to me.
The “dystopian stereotypes” in Picard seem to me to be classic Trek with a very slight change of focus (largely in dwelling in aspects of the setting and social contexts which were indicated in other parts of the franchise but only briefly or tangentially interacted with.)
Kind of like what Lower Decks does, but in a different direction (and played for drama rather than laughs.)
It tries to be a comedy, a parody, but you can also tell it's a love-letter to old-school Star Trek.
Sometimes a singular vision leads to something great. Something it doesn't. Sometimes a single vision contained by bureaucracy leads to something great. Sometimes a vision helped along by others creates great things. Sometimes nobody has any vision and they somehow end up with something amazing. Sometimes you have a bad vision and others turn the core of your idea into something awesome.
There are literally tons of examples for all of these. We have 10k+ years of human history of art.
I have to disagree with you here.
Both Civ II and Alpha Centauri were headed by a strong single author. As were both the original Civ and Civ IV which I and many others would see as the best manifestation of the game.
We can also see this outside of the Civ franchise. Think of Super Mario, Popoulous, Doom/Quacke, Sim City, Elite – just to name a few.
Great games were made by great Designers, yes, single authors. Very much akin to big movies or fantasy novels.
These examples, at least (the others are a bit outside of my knowledge), fit the pattern outlined above of having worse successor projects headed by a former team-member.
Doom was a tense collaboration between Carmack and Romero. Carmack was geniusing out the engine, while Romero was pulling hard on the game atmosphere, music, level design and details like the timer that spawned Doom's speedrunning culture.
Quake, which was Romero-less, was a technical masterpiece, but not a very memorable game. There was the brown level, the other brown level, and the brown level again but different. Its modding potential plus competent network code really made it a big hit.
Could you elaborate on that? I'm aware of speedrunning (it's fun to watch!) but I don't know anything about "the timer".
Without it's art, doom would be a very different game.
Can't recommend Masters of Doom enough, the book that talks about the history of id Software. That all these guys came together in the same place is a miracle in itself.
[1] https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/
If that's not genius, I don't know what is.
Most games written in assembly were not at the scale of Transport Tycoon, though.
As for Civilization II - it sucked hard and if anyone feels insulted about this claim, then they really have to sit down and shake their brain box to remember if that Windows monstrosity of Civilization II was really that great. Sure, videos of advisers was new technological advance, which very quickly became nuisance and then were turned off. Music was initially great, but after a while I had to play Civilization II without it, unlike Heroes of Might and Magic II, which had the greatest music and was proper full screen game for Windows(and DOS!!!). Not to mention, that there was great strategy game of Master of Orion 2: Battle of Antaris. And then there was a Civilization clone - Master of Magic - with had a very successful following as Age of Wonders. Anyway, I can still enjoy first Civilization(even with that nasty bug, that glitches Earth map in late game), because of Genius simplicity of a game, but can't say the same for Civilization II even if I had fun when I played it, because usage of Windows GUI in Civilization II will feel outdated and very unappealing, which only later Civilization titles fixed.
As for Alpha Centauri - it was not as widely available as Civilization II and technical specifications were ahead of most of PCs, when most of them were not powered by latest Pentiums. That sucked, as I really wanted to play that game(hence the discussion about greatness is more limited, unlike about first Civilization), but by the time I was able to get a hold on it, it was already outdated(and unplayable due to Windows compatibility and color paletting issues!!!), compared to other games that were released at that time.
One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
What I'd love to play is a game like XCOM, but where the tech tree is broader than you can cover in a single game, and where options have tradeoffs - so e.g. it could make sense to have a squad where one soldier is carrying a plasma weapon, and everyone else carries regular rifles, because tactical considerations make it a better option.
(Also one implication of this I didn't like in terms of role-playing: firearms are our weapons, laser weapons are our weapons made from reversing some basic science off alien tech, and plasma weapons are just their guns modified so humans can handle them. I always felt there should be a way to make lasers ultimately better than plasmas, based of my favorite trope of humans beating alien invaders with smarts and sheer force of will.)
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[0] - I never played the old ones, but from what I hear, it's the same, except much more difficult.
>>One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
Hmm, this is interesting observation, but I have excatly the same feelings towards Civilization games that you are describing about XCOM games, because I felt that XCOM games did not offer very deep game and were very repetitive to the same grind. But then, I also have a dislike for any doom scenarious of future and probably that was one of the reasons why I was not impressed by XCOM games and also Civilization II with free range of scenarious as the first thing that map makers did was creation of doomsday scenarios and the ones that weren't doomsday scenarios were not as fun as other games.
>>In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
Well, I feel that some of the "hate" or claims about greatness of some games in past is more on the meme level that over time have developed in myths, that some now are taking too seriously - even religiously... :))
It also has to be taken into the account, that any author that is riding the wave on someones else success has to praise object of the topic even more and that makes self fuelling cycle, but I would not go so far as to claim, that Civilization was not a great game. It stood test of time - my memories of first Civilization are of those times, when other very popular option was Wolfstein 3D and then Doom and Doom II and I still played first Civilization when I got bored of Civilization II. Of course I played later Civilizations as well and had fun, but my ground base memories are not about them all so there will be a bias about some of them.
If it was part of a book or movie you’d roll your eyes.
For example, I think Lukas Pope is a good modern example of single author creating really unique and novel games. Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri on the other hand are more like good examples of fresh ideas being injected into a series under new leadership.
However, my definition of what can be considered a game is also quite broad, and Obra Dinn clearly has an interactive game loop so I think it counts.
I didn't play civ2, but what fresh ideas did alpha centauri bring?
There was the ability to do unit customization (which actually could get a bit overwhelming to teenage me), which came from other 4X gamee set in space I guess.
Another thing is that Civ 1/2 didn't really have very strong differences between nations gameplay wise (if you played as them, enemy AI is a different story). That really started with Alpha Centauri and its ideological factions being partially represented by their gameplay strengths and weaknesses. The way it balances an implied a grander sci-fi narrative through these ideological factions and quotes from their leaders on the one hand, and gameplay mechanics affecting how these factions evolve with the development of new technologies on the other was novel and hasn't really been equalled since imo.
Railway Empire has a lot of the same mechanics as Railroads! but with much better graphics a little added complexity. I don't that many video games these days, but Railway Empire is one I find myself going back to play again and again.
Would be nice to see someone do the same for Pirates!
One of my all-time favorite starts was as Poland with 4 salt resources next to Warsaw. Salt is such a baller resource because it's a luxury good, but it also allows the creation of a mine which boosts production, and production is super key in Civ. I could blast out wonders and the cutting-edge buildings in 5-10 turns, and my tech lead meant almost none of the wonders were unavailable. Don't you just love having 20 wonders in your capital by the end?
I play as Phoenicians, as they get nice bonuses for a water world.
One thing with the speed of AI turns, you may be able to go into the advanced settings and turn on "quick combat" and "quick movement" settings. These take away the combat movement animations and help speed up the game a little bit (sorry, I didn't run the benchmarks, haha).
Enjoy your naval victories, admiral!
Civ 5 and 6 introduced unit stacking constraints that completely change the way the game is played.
If WW2 happened in Civ 5 or 6, the Normandy landings would not have been possible because you would not be able to stack large number of units in one tile. Those landings were "a death stack".
But even if every large battle in history could be represented as a "death stack", Civ 5 and 6 players do not like them.
Then, the hex tiles do not create a good keyboard experience.
As far as death stacks and etc goes, it makes better civilization gameplay imo.
If i want wargame i will play wargame specifically, you could try paradox games or jump straight into slitherine/matrix wargames. To me there is huge difference between the 2 genres.
Any way that's my personal opinion. My overall favorite civ was 2 for what it's worth.
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the game's developers)
[0] https://mohawkgames.com/oldworld/
[1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/old-world-is-almost-the-per...
So when the review says "it's a fun game but you kind of spontaneously take a break after an hour or two", that is a relief for me!
I'm the Linux nerd on the team and try to keep an eye out on Linux-specific issues, and maintain a native Linux build as well, which isn't too hard because the game is built on Unity anyway, it has good cross-platform support.
Unfortunately Old World has only antiquity and classical eras.
I've played every version on the Mac, and VI is my favorite so far except for some of the cheezy quotes that accompany tech discoveries. And it's horribly buggy and slow.
Nevertheless, here I am thinking about the game I started last week but paused reluctantly to participate in real world civilization.
Only downside, related to the slowness, is that it's an utter CPU hog, so my Macbook's fans would be straining within ten minutes. Not so comfortable to have on your lap.
Anyone who wants a game thats in the same vein, i can somewhat recommend Humankind. But it doesn't really have climate change mechanics, more like 'IPCC naming and shaming' since factions will hate on factions that pollute, even in the medieval era..
I would have appreciated that global warming was a thing that needs to be researched, since the phenomenon has only been discovered relatively late (in terms of the entire span of human civilization).
In terms of the entire span of human civilization, yes. But in terms of the age of our modern, industrial societies not so much. It was discussed by Fourier in the 1820, the greenhouse effect was well described by Tyndall in the 1860s (he knew about the effect of methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapour), and its increase due to human activity was explored by Arrhenius in the 1890s.
Just a reminder that we did know about global warming. We've been knowing for a long time.
That is not really correct and very nitpicky. We also know, that volcanic activity that releases those greenhouse gases were actually cooling down planet with catastrophic consequences to humanity that halted economic development. Not to mention, that there is also observation, that cities have higher temperature than in countryside(on average 2 degrees higher in north - 4-5 degrees hotter in south), where cows are generating methane gas. The scourge of 21st century is that human infested urban environment that has constantly hotter temperature than environment around it finally have reached significant enough coverage, so that it is now affecting rest of the planet.
Also, it is worth mention that there is a theory of Nuclear Winter, which is completely avoided in Civilization games.
All the greatest scientists in late 1970s were talking about coming of a new Ice Age. All the science fiction from that era is full of Ice age related stories. So, at the moment global warming is complete bonkers theory, that will fly out of the window as soon as there will be a sufficient volcanic activity level. So far there is also observation, that volanic activity has been going down while global warming has gone up.
The current theory of Global warming is very politicized. The data that lead to this theory was fabricated and opponents to this theory were silenced. And constructive criticism about reasons why there is a global warming is not possible. It is not as much as a theory, as it is a religion with belief system for something that has different natural causes. Besides there is some belief, that there will be high temperatures in equator, that render those regions void of life, while the reality is that highest rise of temperature is going to be around poles and that in turn will improve living conditions to people that are living there now.
The main reason why there exist theory about global warming is because it was a reaction to actions of Arabic Gulf countries in 1980s that halted economy of USA by creating fuel shortage. Suddenly Ice Age theory became defunct overnight...
Though, there are of couse good side effects to this new religion - fuel powered cars are cause for lead poisoning and ending usage of them will be better to health along with other enviromental changes.
When Sid Meyer was making his game, it was not yet known, that lands that are now under ice, would be rebounding and main body of that water will flow to equator(because of planets rotation and shape) to flood things more around equator than lands that are near poles. I did not knew about that either, but I always wanted to build some city on that Earth map in first Civilization, that was turning ocean tiles into land tiles in northern pole because of a bug.
Careful — what was reported in general news was (and is) different from the work of the actual scientists. This is even true when the the news is reporting on a specific scientific report.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...
> All the science fiction from that era is full of Ice age related stories. So, at the moment global warming is complete bonkers theory, that will fly out of the window as soon as there will be a sufficient volcanic activity level.
You can’t use sci-fi to draw conclusions about anything except the culture in which it rises.
Climate research explicitly includes “what do volcanoes do?” as well as other, mostly larger, sources of aerosol cooling. Indeed, this is a subset of “can we do geo-engineering to mitigate the effects?” research.
> The current theory of Global warming is very politicized.
It has indeed been politicised, but in the opposite way you claim: the scientific consensus is basically “totes real”, the reporting makes average Jo think it is “scientists disagree”.
> The data that lead to this theory was fabricated and opponents to this theory were silenced.
Explain.
> And constructive criticism about reasons why there is a global warming is not possible. It is not as much as a theory, as it is a religion with belief system for something that has different natural causes.
Anyone paying attention knows 90%-ish of it is natural, because of the temperature difference between us and the moon. The other 10% is the problem.
> Besides there is some belief, that there will be high temperatures in equator, that render those regions void of life, while the reality is that highest rise of temperature is going to be around poles and that in turn will improve living conditions to people that are living there now.
It does indeed appear to be mostly around the poles. Where the ice is. Which is indeed great if you live in what’s currently an icy wasteland, not so much if you live on the coast literally anywhere else. Will also mess with the thermo-haline circulation, I don’t know the current consensus on how much it will mess with it, but that’s the thing keeping Western Europe warmer than Newfoundland-Nova Scotia right now.
>You can’t use sci-fi to draw conclusions about anything except the culture in which it rises.
I can draw conclusion about culture of that age - just like I can draw conclusions of my own on this culture of modern era, which sure will also raise questions to future generations. However my conclusions about human behaviours has nothing to do with the volcanic activity, that will prove theory of Global warming wrong.
My main point here is that Sid Meyer during the creation of his game probably had no idea about those early global warming papers and "research" that you are so eager to point in that publication from earlier times - including earlier centuries, but clearly the idea about global warming was in the air in 1980s for completelly different reasons. Since I did not live in US, I can't recollect any talks about global warming in 1980s - this really exploded in my region only in 2000s(not much after it became a thing in US), when effects of global warming could be seen and when Al Gore was pioneering the usage of this question to gain political power.
>Explain.
The wiki part is not that interesting as background story of childish - even Hitler Nazi behaviour of scientists, where the one who provided that chart(without any proof) and who later could not admit that he was wrong about calculations(that this whole model was based upon) and who caused grief to anyone else who opposeed him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph
>The other 10% is the problem.
Providing numbers like these are what I call a religious belief.
Rounding up millions and forcing them into slave labour camps and working them to death in weapons factories in a futile effort to conquer the Soviet Union?
No?
Then have you considered the possibility that it’s the “it’s not real” campaigners who are politicising this?
> However my conclusions about human behaviours has nothing to do with the volcanic activity, that will prove theory of Global warming wrong.
Volcanic activity is already accounted for. Human activity vastly exceeds its effects.
> Providing numbers like these are what I call a religious belief.
What would you consider “not religious”?
I’m basing 90%-ish on the size of change we are concerned with preventing versus the magnitude of the difference between the earth and the moon:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Average%20temperature%2...
Though frankly, as you’ve already gone for argument by reductio-nazi-absurdum, I’m honestly expecting you to dispute the temperature of the moon at this point.
>Volcanic activity is already accounted for. Human activity vastly exceeds its effects.
Be real. That is neither possible according to modern human technological advances, nor is true.
>What would you consider “not religious”?
Anything that is not based on belief.
>I’m basing 90%-ish on the size of change we are concerned with preventing versus the magnitude of the difference between the earth and the moon
Well, that is interesting and unique take upon the global warming, but somehow without dipping into this deeper I don't think, that this approach is effective to describe global warming or is even taken into account. This only reflects, that you are a human being and have independent thinking, but I would not waste that on something that is waste of time... unless you are serious on making career on this.
>Though frankly, as you’ve already gone for argument by reductio-nazi-absurdum, I’m honestly expecting you to dispute the temperature of the moon at this point.
Are you ok? You decided to be white knight because I responded to someones else comment that he was picking out and declaring, that we knew about global warming forever, which is not so. People in northern hemisphere would specifically ignore memories about gradual warming or warmer periods and remember about cold winters and tell about them for other generations - it is just how it happened, and they would not tell about something good, that gave them slightly better tan, but they would tell about those winters that killed their cattle and how they survived through it.
Dude, just calm down - arguing is one thing, but I do not deserve your personal attack on me - only because I have my own opinion about this scam and also about the people who use it to gain personal benefits out of it.
Of course Sun sunspot maximum is coming closer and there is also link to that people get crazy during that period... anyway - this is way off the topic of Sid Meyers Civilization, when people were not as batshit crazy about nothing as now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts&t=3s
They mention Empire as an influence, and there's a really nice modern implementation of Empire available for Windows and iOS.
http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/mother.html
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mother-of-all-battles/id425160...
I played the Americans in one game, and as time progressed oil appears. I had a large empire, but no oil. My peaceful neighbouring empire however did, so I had no choice but to invade.
20 years. Great times.
They do provide a readme that tells you you can play previous versions of the game by navigating to the install directory and running the particular executable you want, but they only ship the one executable. Not sure why they went to the trouble of removing the other executables.
Man, does putting the person's name before the game name sour it. So antipathic.
This neither seems in line with the traditional use of 'he/him' in English texts, or even the neutrality of 'he/him and or she/her'. It reads more like a stunted attempt to virtue signal. I'm quite confident that Civilization games skew to male players, rather than female.
What a great way to alienate readers. More so when gender was not a central feature of the article at all.
In fact, their "close" relation is just apparent: it seems that 'he' comes from variations from the demonstrative 'ki' ("this/here"), but 'she', while still coming from a demonstrative, comes from a different demonstrative, 'so' (feminine 'seo') - the source of 'the' -, which came into use to disambiguate as original feminine 'heo' collapsed into 'he' in spoken language.
You may not fall into either of those two camps, but let me assure you, it's a lot of people.
For reference, the gender-neutral singular in English is "they/them/their"
they /T͟Hā/ pronoun
2. used to refer to a person of unspecified gender.
I think thou'st meant "Thou may not fall into either of those two camps, but let me assure thee, it's a lot of people."
The commenter thou art replying to is a singular person, not a group, and as we know, while other words may come and go, the use of pronouns in a language does not change over time.
Let me also assure you that "they" hasn't always been (and still isn't to many) accepted as a singular pronoun. Crazy how things change.
The perception some have is instead that of inserting gender where it was irrelevant. (Those "some" do not associate 'he' and masculine, probably also for cultural reasons as expressed nearby.)
Although less common, this is nothing new. I've seen texts that use "her" as the primary pronoun since the 90's.
(And yes, people have been pointlessly complaining for that long).