Civilization IV (PC) > Reviews > Civilisation IV

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment	Excellent - very playable game
Graphics	OK
Sound	Excellent - makes full use of my speakers
Difficulty & Complexity	A difficult game - needs a lot of patience

Advantages:	Addictive, Vast, Complex to Master, Simple to Play .
Disadvantages:	Addictive, Slows down in later stages .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Introduction

Civilisation IV is, unsuprisingly, the fourth in the well known series by Sid Meir. The game sees you try to build a civilisation from 4000BC through to 2050AD and dominate your neighbours through a combination of military, cultural, diplomatic and technological means.

Gameplay

The game is turn based and each of your units have a movement rating that allows you to move a certain number of spaces (tiles) per turn. You begin with a single settler on the map with most of the area blacked out until it is explored, this settler can be used to make your first city.

Cities

The first thing you will do is look to place this city in a good location. Each of the tiles on the map is a different type of land which gives varying benifits to your city. The different types are: Plains, Grassland, Desert, Tundra, Hill, Mountain, Forest, Jungle or Water. Creating your city is a balancing act between food (to allow your city to grow), money (to sustain your growing empire) and production (to produce units and buildings) and each tile gives benifits to each, place your city in an area with a lot of grassland near water and you will have plenty of food, near hills and mountains and you will have lots of production but maybe no one to work the tiles. Desert is not a good thing. These tiles can be improved by worker units from your city who can build structures such as roads, farms and mines.

In addition to the tile types, some tiles have commodities and resources on them. These might be luxury goods such as silk to make your populace happy or foods such as grain to make them more healthy. They may be strategic resources such as Iron, Elephants, Steel, Oil or Uranium that will give you an important advantage over your competitors.

Once you have your first city you can begin to build buildings and units within it. Cities generate Science, Production, Money and Culture. These are all attributes that can be increased by the creation of buildings such as libraries, forges, banks and theatres respectively.

Understanding and increasing these attributes is the key to success in the game, Science progresses your technology, giving you important advances, production allows you to create units and buildings faster, money to buy units and ensure you can research as fast as possible and culture to impress your neighbours into joning with you.

Wonders

As well as normal buildings, it is possible to build wonders of the world. These usually give a large bonus to your civilisation such as a new technology, a bonus to your population or increased happiness and it is a race to build them. Wonders start as well known historical structures such as the Colossus, the Hanging Gardens or the Pyramids and move through to modern day inventions such as the Internet (a particularly evil wonder that allows you to steal other peoples technology) the howl of anguish you have as someone beats you to a wonder's construction by a turn is not a happy moment.

Technology

The game sees you attempt to run up the technology tree as fast as possible but the direction in which it is done is one of the key areas of the game. You will often not be ahead in all areas of technology but you can get ahead in certain areas.

Technologies allow you to create new wonders, buildings, improvements and military and non-military units. It may also have a one off effect such as granting an additional technology, revealing new resources or a new facet of gameplay such as technology trading (alphabet) or revealing the map (satellites).

What you wish to research will depend on your style of play and the resources around you. My prefered start is to research Animal Husbandry (to make use of nearby animal resources) Writing, and then Alphabet so I can swap technologies with other players. At this point in the game I am usually the only person with this skill and so people can only trade technologies with me. However there are a 100 different combinations I could have started with at this point and many thousands by the end of the game. It is this that makes Civilisation IV an infinitely replayable experience.

War and Expansion

Eventually your civilisation will attract the notice of other players and of the roving bands of barbarians that inhabit the map. At this point, even if you are the most peacful of players (which I must say I am), you are going to need some form of army.

Armies are created by cities as part of their production. You will start with the most simple of warriors armed with clubs and might move through archer, spearman, swordsman, horse archer, knight, musketeer, rifleman, infantry, marine, tank, stealth bomber. There are many more and it will depend on the technologies you research and the resources you have on which you deploy.

Cities create an area of influence around them depending on their culture. When the borders of cities of two opposing cultures meet then they will start vieing for control of the tiles around them and eventually influence the city to join the opposite civilisation. At this point relations between civilisations worsen and the AI will usually come and attack you (of course you might have attacked them first).

You can combine your units into stacks and the terrain in which they are situated makes a difference. Having large stacks is an advantage as it means that the unit with the most health is always attacked and the most appropirate unit faces off when attacked (eg. it will select a spearman vs a knight (poor horsey)) however it is a disadvantage as some units can damage every units in a stack. Attacking a city will usually need you to bombard it first to remove defensive bonuses unless you wish to take heavy casulties. The combat mechanics themselves take place as simple animations but are basically dice rolls using the attack and defense characteristics and bonuses of the units involved. Combat is simple at first but gets more complex once planes are added to the picture. Naval combat is also a feature.

Units gain experience as they go, such as extra movement, power, healing or defensive bonuses and you find yourself trying to keep units alive. This is doubly true as having experienced units allows you to build some high level military buildings.

Of course if all goes wrong you can always develop and deploy nuclear weapons on your opponents cities, this is a devestating attack but also a last resort as it will a) see you drop down the popularity stakes sharpish and b) start off global warming which turns random tiles to desert.

Great People, Specialists and Golden Ages

Periodically you will get great people in your civilisation such as artists (Da Vinci, Elvis), scientists (Curie, Einstien), engineers (Brunel, Archemidies) merchant (Bill Gates (joke)), or priests (St. Augustine). These people can be used to add to your city's stats, to develop new technologies, to complete production or to start a golden age.

A golden age is started by combining two or more great people and give you 8 turns of super increased production, money and research. Stringing together several golden ages can give you a huge advantage over the opposition.

Great people are generated by one of the new features in Civ IV, the specialist. You can turn excess population in your cities into specialists which provide a city wide bonus and generate great people of their type. It is here that a lot of the micromanagement in Civ IV takes place.

Religion and Civics

Religion and Civics play an important part in both your populations happiness and your relationships with other cultures. Having the same religion as a neighbour means a positive relationship (not historically accurate) and different relegions a negative (definately and still historically accurate). Civics are granted by technology and are items such as democracy, slavery, mercentilism, enviomentalism etc which have various effects on your civilisation.

Diplomacy and Civilisations

Interactions with other players takes place frequently inthe game, you can trade resources and technology, ask opinions of other factions, enter into alliances and defensive pacts, make demands, exchange maps or if all else fails declare war.

There are a large number of civilisations you can start with during the game and they all come with distinct bonuses such as increased wonder production (Roosevelt, America) or Military Unit bonus experience (Genghis Khan, Monguls) each civilisation has a great person to front it and you will soon have your favorites and nemises (damn those Incans).

Styles of Play and Victory

There are 5 ways to win the game, Territory (you own 75% of all the tiles on the board Military (you eliminate all your rivals) Technological (you advence so much you make a spaceship and conquor the stars), Cultural (you have 5 cities over a certain value (I have never managed this)) or Diplomatic (you create the United Nations and get people to vote you the winner).

With this many ways to win it is possible to run a game how you enjoy playing and this helps the game appeal to a wider audience. This is for example one of the very few games my wife enjoys. There are a number of difficultiy levels ranging from the truly easy to the impossible. Noble is my favorite as you feel you are always in the game without zooming ahead. The game records your high scores and when you beat your own personal one there is much satisfaction. Though initially complex the game comes with a large and comprehensive manual.

Graphics, Performance and Sound

The graphics are at best adequate but this is not the type of game where this really matters. The people you interact with are well created but generally we are looking at minimum animation and a game that will not stun anyone visually.

Performance is good and this is a game that will run on most laptops. I would say that in the later game on the bigger maps there can be a lot of slowdown on a poorer PC and this should be looked on as a negative.

Sound is excellent with atmospheric music that changes as you go through the epochs of your civilisation. In addition when you discover a new technology you get a relevent quote ("democracy is the worst of all political systems, except all others that have ever been tried") which are voiced by none other than Leonard Nimoy.

Conclusion

This is an excellent game that will give many hours of pleasure, It rewards patience and perseverance and as you understand the mechanics there is more and more pleasure to be had. Micromanagment has been reduced from previous versions and this allows you to feel in control of an empire you have created yourself.

Availability: Can be found in most game stores and second hand. This had been out a while so is now often reduced.

System Specs (Reccomended)

1.8Ghz Intel or Equivilent
512 Ram
128mb Video Card
1.7Gb HD space
DVD drive