I've been a fan of Sid Meier's Civ games since Civ 2 came out 10 years ago. For people not familiar with Civ, the basic concept is simple. Start with a wandering tribe in pre-history, build a settlement, defend it, develop it, build another and so forth, all the time advancing your scientific and cultural knowledge until - assuming your adversaries have n't invaded and defeated you along the way - you arrive at the Space Age having either conquered said adversaries or having been the first to build a spaceship to colonise Alpha Centauri. It's a formula that's been copied, with varying degrees of success, in a host of games since. None of which match up to the gold standard of this latest incarnation- Civilization IV.
First it looks great, a nicely rendered would with animated units, workers bustling around building roads, farms, cottages and mines, realistic-looking cities and splendid little video clips to reward you when you build a Wonder of the World.
It also sounds good with quotes delivered by Leonard Nimoy(Mr Spock) appropriate to your scientific discoveries, German units speaking German, French ones speaking French etc and music that, at the moment anyway, I find attractive and rather haunting. It also goes further than earlier versions of Civ and its imitators in terms of subtlety and sophistication. Put simply I mean there are more - and better - ways of building an empire than simply wading into the opposition with an army of tanks and gunships (though of course you can do this and great fun its is too!). You can also get the edge economically or culturally. You can gain huge advantages by exporting your own religion to other civilizations; you can build a network of powerful alliances with others, and you can prosper through trade. It's in these elements that the game has its greatest apppeal and challenge; in, for want of a better way of putting it, getting the balance right. If you decide to focus exclusively, for example, on cultural advancement then your neighbour is quite likley to wade into your beautifully cultured cities with an army of catapults and macemen. Conversely if you focus exclusively on the military your culturally-starved border cities will probably revolt and join the neighbouring civ with its theatres, libraries and wonders of the world. Advance on a cultural or religious path and you'll still have spearmen while the opposition is using panzers; concentrate only on military advances and watch your borders shrink in the face of more advanced cultures. According to your own style & preferences you can play as for instance the Indians led by the spiritual and industrious Gandhi or the Greeks led by the philosophical and aggressive Alexander - or as the English, Germans, Mailians etc etc each with their own characteristics and consequent advantages. You can play at difficulty levels ranging from the easy, basic Settler level up to the almost-impossible Deity level. You can play the AI (which behaves very rationally) or multiplayer. Ther's a powerful modiifcation tool for you to create your own worlds and scenarios. The game's turn-based so you have time to think and it autosaves regularly so that if you made a ghastly mistake of pitting two warriors and a spearman against an army of riflemen you can fairly readily go back and rewrite history. Only a few minor quibbles. It needs a pretty powerful bit of kit.(Recommended 1.8GHz Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor and 512 Mb of RAM); I've got the minimum spec (1.2 GHz and 256 Mb RAM) and it's slow to load and very occasionally freezes on me. Also a very slight disappointment that the people of my empire no longer demonstrate their admiration for my talents by improving my Throne Room or Palace as per Civ 2 and 3 respectively. But all in all, for my money, the best strategy game so far. Now, if only Sierra would bring out Caesar 4 and Civil War Generals 3 my joy would be complete
I believe that I am missing a part of the civiv game. It is my understanding that I am supposed to have two discs, I only have one. I wrote a note earlier and as yet have recieved no reply. Can you help?
Up until a couple of weeks ago I was still playing Civ 3 Conquests, and now I am playing this. Alot has been made of the new graphical nature of the game - it uses the same graphics engine as the recent Pirates game from Firaxis so the graphics look nice, without being too detailed. The unit animations are OK and as you would expect the music is pretty good although if you've played pirates you will already have heard some of it. Some areas of the game have recieved big make overs. The tech tree is now much less linear, if you want to research purely military matters then you can - but if you don;t research the science based tech then the resources needed to build your new units will not be available. Government has also had a shake up with the way you govern your people being divided into 5 civics. The civics are broadly split into governmantal types so if you want to be a pacifist you can be, if you want to go all out for war you can more interestingly you can also manage your upkeep costs by chosing the right type of civic - you don't need to be a communist to select the State Ownership civic. Your military units gain experience from battle and the experience cab be used to buy upgrades - more heatlh, healing skills, flanking, first attack to name a few. This does give the art of warfare a well needed update, but it is still fairly similar. You can now also look at the probability of a succesful outcome to any given battle which is a nice idea, but I'm not sure it adds much to the game... Religion is also an interesting concept and as the game progresses it becomes more important. The first civ to hit the right part of the tech tree founds a new religion - this then spreads through your trade system and can cause other civilistaions to be converted to your faith. Other civs opinion of you may well be influenced by whether you have the same religion or not - and even by your choice of civics! Diplomacy is now more fully featured again - with the Stop War with xxx feature back again and trade relationships continue until one side cancels the deal. The other civ needs to have hit the right area of the tech tree before you can use some the more advanced diplomatic options though. The game is much more resouce hungary than previous versions - my 2Ghz 1GBRam GForce 4200 laptop is struggling with the HUGE map and 11 civilisations, whereas my P4 1GB Ram Radeon 850XT based PC chews it up with no problems. I have had none of the concerns with the installation that have been mentioned in some of the previous reviews and I am thoughly enjoying it. A good game well updated - I fuly expect to still be playing this when Civ 5 is released (although I may need to update my laptop in order to do so). I'm giving this 9/10 but rounding down to 4 stars.