Introduction
Do you have it in you to build a civilization that can stand the test of time? Anything sounds familiar here? Yes, it is the latest installment of the Civilization series, Civilization IV. For those whom this isnt making much sense, Sid Meier's Civilization is recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all-time with over 6 million units sold. And another important thing is this is a turn-based game.
Graphics
Fire the game up and the first thing you would notice is the graphics! It has a completely new 3D graphics engine and if anything seems familiar here about it, you probably would have played Sid Meier's Pirates which used the same
graphics engine. Everything is now animated including rivers and resources like elephants and horses. The terrain is fully 3D and depending on how your cities are developing, the city changes look. So build a wonder like the Statue of Liberty in a city, and you would be able to see it immediately. Another cool feature is the zooming where you would be able to zoom out and see the complete globe!! Also, click on a leader of a Civilization and you would see excellent graphically rendered heads with a lot of expressions depending on their stance with you!!
Note anything familiar with the city?
Gameplay
Now lets get to the gameplay. The rules to win a game are numerous. You can destroy or conquer all the other civilizations to achieve a conquest or domination victory, increase your culture to achieve a cultural victory, achieve a diplomatic victory by building the UN and getting other Civs to for you as a world leader or be the first to build a spaceship to launch to Alpha Centauri or a time victory by having the highest score at 2050!! Wheww... Now that is a lot of options!!
The first thing old fans would find is absence of the anarchy in a town or city when unhappiness reaches a point when the people cant take it anymore. Now, in such a case the unhappy folks in the town just refuse to work. Corruption and pollution also have been toned down in importance.
The biggest difference is the introduction of the concept Religion in the game. Religions can be founded by Civilizations by researching certain technologies but there is nothing like a religion being better then another. Instead religions work as another method of influencing other Civilizations as well as increasing your Civilization cultural output. Build Temples and then create missionaries and then send them to neighboring Civilization cities to convert them to your religion and increase the bonding with them. Civilizations having different religions then yours could be hostile to you.
Another important addition is the presence of Civics which is subdivided into 5 categories: Religion, Economy, Labour, Legal and Government. Previously in older Civ games you could research a form of Govt and then switch to is as your form of government. Now there is more flexibility with Civics due to the divisions.
A lot of previous irritating features present in previous games which included AI units always blundering into your territory and savages with bows and arrows taking down jets have been ironed out. Another new touch is the presence of Great people that provide an interesting turn to the game as they can be used to research new technologies or speed up wonder construction in cities or increase the cultural or scientific output of cities.
A large learning curve was a very important drawback of the previous Civilization games that always could turn off a lot of newbies to the games. Now there is a tutorial section where a graphically rendered Sid Meier explains the basics of the game while learning and this brings the game more playable to those less-hardcore strategy gamers out there.
Music
The music in the game is also awesome which includes pieces from Bach and Beethoven. The opening soundtrack is very good which is done by the composer Christopher Tin and sounds a lot like the music from the Lion King. If anybody wants to listen to it, you can download it here.
Multiplayer
Over to the multiplayer part. Playing multiplayer is the most fun part of the game. Connecting to Internet games is possible thanks to Gamespy and you can enter the game lobby and into a game easily. Another good feature in
multiplayer is while gaming when a player drops out, the AI takes over and another player can then enter the player
slot resulting in a seamless multiplayer experience. Gaming over email is also possible as in previous versions but i havent checked it out yet so not adding that to the review.
Is this the future we see??
Downside
Now lets move on the downers in the game. The only downside as i see is the heft system requirements. Playing on a large maps with multiple AI civilizations results in slowing down of the system as the game reaches concluding time periods. And this is on an AthlonXP 2600+ with 1 GB RAM and a Geforce 6600GT. On those lower systems, i shudder to think how games could be played..
The initial bugs like problems with those with ATi cards and multiplayer problems have been ironed out with subsequent patch releases.
Conclusion
Building a sequel is always difficult as you got to strike a good balance with keeping old fans happy and bringing new players to the game. All in all, this is an excellent installment to the Civilization series that has only pulled the game to a higher level of success. If turn based games were played and understood by all, i think this would easily be labelled the Strategy Game of the Year 2005. A must play game for all those strategy fans out there coz this is strategy at its hardcore best. The options in the game are just mind blowing but in a sense is the biggest downfall of the game also as casual gamers find it very hard to understand. Nevertheless, i think Firaxis games has done an excellent job here with Civilization IV and i look forward to the next installment with much anticipation.
Do you have it in you to build a civilization that can stand the test of time? Anything sounds familiar here? Yes, it is the latest installment of the Civilization series, Civilization IV. For those whom this isnt making much sense, Sid Meier's Civilization is recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all-time with over 6 million units sold. And another important thing is this is a turn-based game.
Graphics
Fire the game up and the first thing you would notice is the graphics! It has a completely new 3D graphics engine and if anything seems familiar here about it, you probably would have played Sid Meier's Pirates which used the same
graphics engine. Everything is now animated including rivers and resources like elephants and horses. The terrain is fully 3D and depending on how your cities are developing, the city changes look. So build a wonder like the Statue of Liberty in a city, and you would be able to see it immediately. Another cool feature is the zooming where you would be able to zoom out and see the complete globe!! Also, click on a leader of a Civilization and you would see excellent graphically rendered heads with a lot of expressions depending on their stance with you!!
Note anything familiar with the city?
Gameplay
Now lets get to the gameplay. The rules to win a game are numerous. You can destroy or conquer all the other civilizations to achieve a conquest or domination victory, increase your culture to achieve a cultural victory, achieve a diplomatic victory by building the UN and getting other Civs to for you as a world leader or be the first to build a spaceship to launch to Alpha Centauri or a time victory by having the highest score at 2050!! Wheww... Now that is a lot of options!!
The first thing old fans would find is absence of the anarchy in a town or city when unhappiness reaches a point when the people cant take it anymore. Now, in such a case the unhappy folks in the town just refuse to work. Corruption and pollution also have been toned down in importance.
The biggest difference is the introduction of the concept Religion in the game. Religions can be founded by Civilizations by researching certain technologies but there is nothing like a religion being better then another. Instead religions work as another method of influencing other Civilizations as well as increasing your Civilization cultural output. Build Temples and then create missionaries and then send them to neighboring Civilization cities to convert them to your religion and increase the bonding with them. Civilizations having different religions then yours could be hostile to you.
Another important addition is the presence of Civics which is subdivided into 5 categories: Religion, Economy, Labour, Legal and Government. Previously in older Civ games you could research a form of Govt and then switch to is as your form of government. Now there is more flexibility with Civics due to the divisions.
A lot of previous irritating features present in previous games which included AI units always blundering into your territory and savages with bows and arrows taking down jets have been ironed out. Another new touch is the presence of Great people that provide an interesting turn to the game as they can be used to research new technologies or speed up wonder construction in cities or increase the cultural or scientific output of cities.
A large learning curve was a very important drawback of the previous Civilization games that always could turn off a lot of newbies to the games. Now there is a tutorial section where a graphically rendered Sid Meier explains the basics of the game while learning and this brings the game more playable to those less-hardcore strategy gamers out there.
Music
The music in the game is also awesome which includes pieces from Bach and Beethoven. The opening soundtrack is very good which is done by the composer Christopher Tin and sounds a lot like the music from the Lion King. If anybody wants to listen to it, you can download it here.
Multiplayer
Over to the multiplayer part. Playing multiplayer is the most fun part of the game. Connecting to Internet games is possible thanks to Gamespy and you can enter the game lobby and into a game easily. Another good feature in
multiplayer is while gaming when a player drops out, the AI takes over and another player can then enter the player
slot resulting in a seamless multiplayer experience. Gaming over email is also possible as in previous versions but i havent checked it out yet so not adding that to the review.
Is this the future we see??
Downside
Now lets move on the downers in the game. The only downside as i see is the heft system requirements. Playing on a large maps with multiple AI civilizations results in slowing down of the system as the game reaches concluding time periods. And this is on an AthlonXP 2600+ with 1 GB RAM and a Geforce 6600GT. On those lower systems, i shudder to think how games could be played..
The initial bugs like problems with those with ATi cards and multiplayer problems have been ironed out with subsequent patch releases.
Conclusion
Building a sequel is always difficult as you got to strike a good balance with keeping old fans happy and bringing new players to the game. All in all, this is an excellent installment to the Civilization series that has only pulled the game to a higher level of success. If turn based games were played and understood by all, i think this would easily be labelled the Strategy Game of the Year 2005. A must play game for all those strategy fans out there coz this is strategy at its hardcore best. The options in the game are just mind blowing but in a sense is the biggest downfall of the game also as casual gamers find it very hard to understand. Nevertheless, i think Firaxis games has done an excellent job here with Civilization IV and i look forward to the next installment with much anticipation.
