Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Windows

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3.8 stars from 6 review(s)

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Civilization IV (PC)

Firaxis has announced it is planning on adding another installment to its best-selling strategy series.

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With over 6 million units sold and unprecedented critical acclaim from fans and press around the world, Sid Meier's Civilization is recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all-time. Now, Sid Meier and Firaxis Games will take this incredibly fun and addictive game to new heights by adding new ways to play and win, new tools to manage and expand your civilization, all-new easy to use mod capabilities and intense multiplayer modes and options. Civilization IV will come to life like never before in a beautifully detailed, living 3D world that will elevate the gameplay experience to a whole new level. Civilization IV has already been heralded as one of the top ten games of 2005, and a must-have for gamers around the globe!Faster-Paced Fun Gameplay has been streamlined for a tighter, faster and more compelling experience.Greater Accessibility and Ease of Play An easy-to-use interface will be immediately familiar to RTS and action game players, and newcomers to the series will be able to jump in and play.Tech Tree Flexible Tech tree allows players more strategic choices for developing their civilizations along unique paths.More Civs, Units, and Improvements to enhance and grow your empire.Multiplayer LAN, Internet, PBEM and Persistent Turn-Based Server (PTBS) offer players all-new strategies and ways to play when competing or cooperating with live opponents.Team Play - Whether playing multiplayer or single player, team play offers a new way of setting locked alliances that result in shared wonder effects, visibility, unit trading and shared territory that delivers a plethora of new strategic and tactical options.Civ IV comes to life! - Beautiful 3D world with dozens of fully animated units (including culturally unique units) and totally customizable armies. Cities and wonders will appear on the map. Wonder moWith over 6 million units sold and unprecedented critical acclaim from fans and press around the world, Sid Meier's Civilization is recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all-time. Now, Sid Meier and Firaxis Games will take this incredibly fun and addictive game to new heights by adding new ways to play and win, new tools to manage and expand your civilization, all-new easy to use mod capabilities and intense multiplayer modes and options. Civilization IV will come to life like never before in a beautifully detailed, living 3D world that will elevate the gameplay experience to a whole new level. Civilization IV has already been heralded as one of the top ten games of 2005, and a must-have for gamers around the globe!Faster-Paced Fun Gameplay has been streamlined for a tighter, faster and more compelling experience.Greater Accessibility and Ease of Play An easy-to-use interface will be immediately familiar to RTS and action game players, and newcomers to the series will be able to jump in and play.Tech Tree Flexible Tech tree allows players more strategic choices for developing their civilizations along unique paths.More Civs, Units, and Improvements to enhance and grow your empire.Multiplayer LAN, Internet, PBEM and Persistent Turn-Based Server (PTBS) offer players all-new strategies and ways to play when competing or cooperating with live opponents.Team Play - Whether playing multiplayer or single player, team play offers a new way of setting locked alliances that result in shared wonder effects, visibility, unit trading and shared territory that delivers a plethora of new strategic and tactical options.Civ IV comes to life! - Beautiful 3D world with dozens of fully animated units (including culturally unique units) and totally customizable armies. Cities and wonders will appear on the map. Wonder mo

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Hard transition from Civ III

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Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Windows

I have been a huge fan of Civ through Civ 2, Civ III and the Civ III Expansion pack. I recently got Civ IV for Christmas and I'm still adjusting to it. The only way I can really enjoy it is to erase what I knew from Civ III and just pretend that it's an unrelated game. There are some fundamental changes in this game, many of which have already been addressed in other reviews. I am going to add a few things that I'm bumping into as I learn how to play Civ IV.

1. Map size is much smaller
In Civ III on a std map, you might build 15 cities. In a Civ IV std map, you're going to get 5 and the game will tell you that you have the largest civ! The map appears to be much smaller, but I think the focus is to do *more* with less cities.
PRO:
Since you have less cities to focus on, you can really put your attention to fully developing them. You have a lot more ways of working your terrain, like building farms, pastures, watermills, forges, etc. If you enjoy terrain development and urban planning,

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you have less to focus on so you can give it your full attention. Cottages in your city will actually develop into hamlets and then into towns. Your cities will be much more complex.
CON:
My old strategies from CIV III, namely building as many cities as possible as soon as possible, seem to be less relevant here. In Civ III, on a huge map on a higher difficulty level, you would want to hastily throw up as many cities as you can. It's hard to change the focus, if you that's what you're used to.

2. Tech tree is diversified and seems to lack many pre-reqs
PRO:
A lot of new techs have been added to give you more diversified civic planning. Animal husbandry is a new one, for example, as is "Guilds". You'll need Bronze Working if you want your workers to be able to chop down forests (and forests will grow if you're not tending to them). I enjoy the new techs that give civic development more depth and seem more realistic.
CON:
-The tech tree seems to be a bit too loose. I discovered Nuclear Fission and built the Manhattan Project the other day before I had even discovered Medicine! The game will announce you've moved into the Classical or Renaissance Era or something and you might not have even discovered Alphabet yet. You can move ahead with technology where it's just not a logical development. In easier game levels, you'll discover new tech so frequently that it becomes annoying to keep clicking on the tech menu. I discovered so many new techs in the earlier part of an easier game that I didn't even have time to use them! It's too much to do with instant gratification and game action, I think, that it's distracting.
-This is probably my own learning curve but I cannot figure out the clear victory path yet. In Civ III, you'd want to throw yourself into discovering Lit so you could build the Great Library and get many free techs. Then, you'd want to concentrate on moving to Democracy at one point, because your workers would be so much more efficient and your income would dramatically go up. Then, you'd need Steam Power so you could have all your military units able to move across your entire map in one turn for attack or defense. With new religions, and civics and being able to develop tech in illogical orders, I cannot yet figure out the clear victory path in Civ IV.

3. Wonders, new and old
Forget what you know about Wonders from Civ III, b/c they are just fundamentally different now. It would have been even better if they just changed the names to avoid confusion.

4. Foreign Leaders are more complex
PRO:
If you mouse over a leader, it will tell you exactly why he's annoyed with you (your borders are too close, you traded with his enemy). You no longer have to guess why a leader is annoyed vs cautious. I love getting the detail on what the foreign leader's bias is.

CON:
-The leaders will bug the crap out of you constantly. While you're trying to build your cities, you will get numerous 'status' reports from them like, 'Stop trading with my enemy.' To be completely honest, it's annoying to me. I may no longer have to click 'ok' to happy city declarations like in Civ 2 and I may no longer have to constantly clean pollution like in Civ III, but I have to constantly listen to foreign leaders babble on; it's distracting. I miss the long periods of 'quiet' in Civ III, when I could focus on my development tasks and mull over military strategies.
-This is a very minor complaint but the leaders went from looking realistic in Civ III to looking like strange little cartoons in Civ IV. Oh well.

Anyway, those are some things that you might bump into if you were a serious user of Civ III. I think IV is a good game, don't get me wrong, but it's just very very different to III that I have to almost forget that they are related at all.

6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

6 price(s) | 282 days ago at

Turn based strategy at its best

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Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Windows

Like previous Civilization games, Civ 4 is a turn based strategy game that gives you control over the development of your civilization. Without going into all the features, I will point out the strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:
While some will complain about this, the overall game has been redesigned. Unlike previous games which encouraged the building of as many cities as you could in the early part of the game, Civ 4 goes to a more strategic approach, but also gives you something to do each turn(instead of setting production and waiting several turns for what you want to build to finish). The game now eliminates the "corruption" system of previous games, and goes to a system where there is an expense that the city places on your government. So, you start with one city, and you need to build a bit slower, at least in the early game.

The graphics engine is now 3D, and with a decently powerful video card, you can see all your city improvements from the main map. You can

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6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

6 price(s) | 505 days ago at

De-volution

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Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Windows

And yet again we run out and pay $40+ dollars for the newest version of our games/software just to find out that the newest version is less impressive than the prior version. Apparently the designers of CIV4 have fallen into the trap of graphics and audio being more important than playability and the "fun" factor. The qualities that made CIV3 one of the best PC games of all times seem to have been ignored by the designers of CIV4 in a weak attempt to make it "the best ever". The quality of the game is devolving back to unimpressiveness such as Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars versus Episodes 4-6. No lesson learned?
The civilopedia reminds me of playing a Sesame Street game full of icons instead of a list of units, etc. The city screen also is juvenile with icons instead of a list of units, buildings, etc... It is frustrating having to search through a screen of icons instead of being able to choose something off a list or to see a list of buildings in your city. The military adviser screen

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6 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

6 price(s) | 534 days ago at

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