In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship (also known as one of the escort types) with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were actually employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialized functions.

In later years the type evolved; in World War II sloops were specialized convoy-defence vessels, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability.

A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilian or mercantile sloop, which was a general term for a single masted vessel rigged like what we would today call a gaff cutter (but usually without the square topsails then carried by cutter-rigged vessels), though some sloops of that type did serve in the 18th century British Royal Navy, particularly on the Great Lakes of North America.

Sidney K. "Sid" Meier (born February 24, 1954) is a Canadian-American programmer and designer of several popular strategy video games and simulation video games, most notably Civilization. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 and is a Director of Creative Development for computer game developer Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. He has won several prestigious accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry.

Sid Meier was born in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the University of Michigan.

Meier founded MicroProse together with Bill Stealey in 1982. MicroProse initially developed flight simulator video games, such as Silent Service and F-19 Stealth Fighter. In 1987, the company released Sid Meier's Pirates!, which also began a trend of placing Meier's name in the titles of his games. Meier later explained that the inclusion of his name was because of the dramatic departure in the design of Pirates! compared to the company's earlier games. Stealey decided that it would improve the company's branding, believing that it would make those who purchased the flight simulators more likely to play Pirates!. After the release of F-19 Stealth Fighter, Meier decided to focus on developing strategy games. He later said, "Everything I thought was cool about a flight simulator had gone into that game." Inspired by SimCity and Empire!, Meier created Railroad Tycoon and later the game series for which he is most widely recognized, Civilization, although he designed only the first installment. Meier eventually left MicroProse and in 1996 founded Firaxis Games along with veteran designer and gaming executive Jeff Briggs. Today Firaxis makes strategy games, many of which are follow-ups to Meier titles, such as Civilization V and Pirates!. In 1996 he was awarded US Patent 5,496,962 for a "System for Real-Time Music Composition and Synthesis" used in a product called "CPU Bach".