Title: Civilization IV
Genre: Strategy
Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Screenshots: Over here
Ahhh, Civilization. Long have you preyed upon my turn-based-loving brethren, stealing their time and attention. Your latest iteration, the mighty number four, is no different. For those who enjoyed the earlier Civs, or those who favor turn-based action, this gleaming gem of strategy goodness will be a guiding beacon in a sea of monotonous real-time titles. It is a fine addition to the Civilization franchise, though it is not faultless. Poor performance and annoying bugs drag it down somewhat.
The turn-based core of the game has not changed: You still build cities, buildings, units, you research technologies, and then crush your foes with diplomacy and military might. There are some fundamental changes to the game-play, and they combine to sharpen the experience in order to drive home this title's excellence.
First of all, the biggest changes are in the combat and government. In the combat sphere, the attack and defense ratings that previously stood apart from each other have been replaced by a single, unified power rating. This determines the unit's overall strength, and the more damage the unit takes, the less power it has. Units can now be made specialized, with upgrades such as a bonus against melee units, cavalry, or attacking cities. The upgrades are earned with experience achieved through combat, and if you have the right technology, a highly skilled unit will let you build a War Academy, which gives an experience bonus to the units built at that town. Combat is still very much a rock-paper-scissors affair and the chance of spearmen destroying tanks, a long-time annoyance to most Civ fans, has been greatly reduced.
Your government is no longer predetermined; you can instead choose things like Caste System and Feudalism to give you unlimited specialists and hardier troops, respectively. To prevent a particular civilization from blanketing the map with its might, every city now pays a maintenance cost calculated from distance to the capital and other factors. This can quickly add up and so a small, efficient empire can produce more units and money than a giant, sprawling, ill-run monstrosity. A state with just a few cities, if played expertly, can compete with an enormous empire. In this game, even more than its predecessors, one feels that the right balance between producing infrastructure and units must be struck, ere ye works be razed and the blood of your warriors spilled upon the wastes. The most drastic change to the government sphere would probably be the culture system, where your towns produce a bit of culture each and then project it into enemy lands. Your culture is what defines your borders, and almost all military units require war to be declared before they can be moved into lands blanketed by enemy culture. If a town is surrounded by hostile culture, it will eventually revolt and join its cultural besiegers, which brings a variety of non-military based tactics of expansion into play.
The AI is simply magnificent. The developers claim it does not cheat by seeing the entire map, and this appears to be true, but I was constantly struck by how well it played. From garrisoning its cities to staging massive assaults upon my keeps, the AI fought well and fought hard. It is refreshing to be challenged by the computer without resorting to letting it cheat in a massive fashion. Even diplomacy, something often overlooked in strategy games, is robust and feels mostly sane, though of course some AI civilizations choose to behave irrationally, and must be crushed.
When you're done with the AI, it's time to take this sweet experience online. The multiplayer is by far the finest feature of Civilization IV, exciting in its intensity and engagingly paced. To keep things going, it is advisable to set the online turn timer to “Blazing” limiting each player's turn to 30 seconds. With simultaneous turns, the game becomes lightning-fast, which can sometimes become overwhelming. With hundreds of turns per game, it's necessary to keep things moving or else no multiplayer game of Civilization IV would ever be finished. Luckily, with the right settings, the online gaming rarely feels dull.
The game presents some technical challenges. First, its graphics engine is far too pretty and demanding for a turn-based game; however, the payoff for this is a Civilization game that looks absolutely fantastic. The 1.00 version had some massive performance issues such as drastic slow-downs after extended play, indicating memory leaks the size of virtual oceans. My copy would lock up in the multiplayer lobby after 10 seconds and then crash hard, hurtling towards a restart. A good patch has been released, one that took care of my personal problems with the multiplayer, and it has improved the single-player performance somewhat, but don't look into this game if you have an older system or want to play it on a laptop that's anything but brand-new. Civilization IV eats gaming systems for breakfast.
The team behind Civilization IV, led by the legendary Sid Meier (who, in the game, appears as the leader of the barbarian civilization if you make it playable through a cheat) has promised to release the full SDK which is incredible for modding. Modders will be able to change the game completely, leaving only the game and graphics engine intact. This should bring a lot of replayability to the game, as the modding community for the Civilization franchise is immense and dedicated. There are countless mods for Civilization III, and most of the people behind them seem determined to make even more for the latest Civ. This is a mighty benefit for those considering Civilization IV, but do remember that it takes a number of months for proper mods to start appearing on the net, and the only ones currently released are in the very early stages of beta.
Overall, Civilization IV feels to me to be the finest turn-based non-hardcore-historical game of this year. It is incredibly addictive, and even has an optional in-game clock and alarm to remind you that you do not live inside a personal computer. If you liked the previous Civs, you will find much to enjoy here, and new-comers to the turn-based strategy genre would do well to be initiated by this tremendously fun game.
