Civ IV Reviewed
Continuing my recent computer geek trend on this blog, today I bring you my review of Civ IV, which I played a lot over this weekend.
Civ IV continues much in the same mold as Civ 3, except it has a new fancier 3d graphics engine, it's more streamlined, and there are a few seemingly minor changes that have a large impact on the game. The graphics engine is definitely functional, but unfortunately adds relatively little to the game while exacting a fairly heavy toll on your hardware. The interface is functional, but less usable than any previous Civ. They've gone for an icon-based interface -- unfortunately, there are so many icons that look similar, there's no real way to keep them straight. Consequently, I find myself hovering my mouse over an icon and waiting for the popup help a lot, which wastes a lot of time and is annoying. The civilopedia is a complete mess for similar reasons. It's absolutely awful. The other thing I don't like is that you can right click to move units to the square you right click on. Due to other games, I'm constantly right clicking to try and pan the 3d world, and inadvertantly move my unit. There's no way to undo it either. Overall, I'm neutral on the graphics engine, and give a thumbs down to the user interface, although it's certainly functional.
But nobody plays Civ for the graphics, so let's dig into the meat of the game. By far and away the biggest change to the game is the removal of the expansionist strategy. Now, every city you create starts burdening your empire more and more, to the point where you can quickly go broke if you overexpand. As a result of that change, strategic placement becomes more important than spamming cities all over the map, especially in the early game. As a side effect of that, civilizations have less cities, and thus cities are more valuable. The second major change is that opposite Civ 3, enemy units are no longer able to enter your territory without your permission (if you haven't played Civ 3 or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, cities now generate culture points, and when you get enough culture points it expands the borders of influence around your city). This means you don't have to worry about the computer founding a city in the middle of your empire, and it also means a well placed city can act as a strategic choke point on an isthmus. Because cities are more valuable, they are much harder to capture this time around, and it seems somewhat easier to capture them via culture than in previous games. Those two changes form the core of Civ IV, and they're both definitely for the better, as they lead to more valid strategies rather than spamming the map trying to fill in every bit of land so the computer won't settle there.
Let's talk about some other important changes. First off, the tech tree is now more flexible. There's often multiple paths to get to where you want, and you don't have to learn every tech to move to the next era. This means you can completely ignore areas of the tech tree if you want -- my recent Civ had radios before they discovered theology. Second off, barbarians are much more vicious this time around. In addition to barbarian militia, there are barbarian animals. Any square that is not in your empire, and out of the line of sight of a unit can generate a barbarian unit. Consequently, when expanding early, there are barbarian units everywhere. This further reduces the effectiveness of the expansionist strategy, because you need military units for protection. It really sucks when your first scout unit gets eaten by tigers. :) The barbarians can also found cities in this game, and hold land. You can't trade with them, and the only way to deal with them is by force. In my most recent game, the barbarians founded a city in the corner of my island about 5 turns before I got a settler there, and I had to spend over 20 turns producing more military units to evict them. Religion has been added to the game as well, although you can laregly ignore it if you don't want to deal with it. But it does definitely flesh out the theological side of the tech tree a bit if you want to take that route.
The other big change is the addition of great people. Wonders now not only have a special effect and produce culture (which expands your borders), they also produce great people points. When a city accumulates enough total great people points, a great person will be born in one of five categories. There are great prophets, great engineers, great scientists, great artists, and great merchants, and which one you get depends on what type of great wonders you have been building. Each of these units can either join your city as a super-specialist (producing free food, commerce, production, research, or culture points), or has one or two special abilities. Great prophets can found a religious center if you have a religious capital (which you get for free by being the first to discover a religion), which brings in income for every city (yours or your opponents) that is that religion. This can be a significant source of income if you can convert your opponents cities to use your religion. Great engineers can help rush projects -- rushing projects is MUCH harder in this game, so this can be a huge boon. Great scientists can rush technology or found an academy that increases your tech production by 50% in a city. Great merchants can do a trade run and provide a lot of cash. And great artists are perhaps one of the coolest -- they can do what's dubbed a "culture bomb", by adding 4000 culture points to a city immediately. This takes your city to culture level 3 (out of 5) immediately, and makes your city a formidible cultural force. This is imminently useful in two areas: one, when you establish a city near new cities your opponent built, and then use the culture bomb on your city. Since your city has tons of culture and theiers has none, they'll likely revolt and join your empire before too long. The second use is when you capture your first enemy city on a new island. It's hard to keep that city because there's so much cultural pressure from other nearby cities on it. If you drop a great artists in it though, that city will be able to hold it's own, and you will have a nice base of operations that you don't have to worry about converting back to it's original nation.
All said, Civ IV is a nice evolution of the Civ line. It plays much smoother than Civ 3, and removes some of the major issues that game had. It's not a revolutionary release, rather an evolutionary one -- but still one I think is worth it, even if you own Civ 3. I give it a solid 9.0/10.
Civ IV continues much in the same mold as Civ 3, except it has a new fancier 3d graphics engine, it's more streamlined, and there are a few seemingly minor changes that have a large impact on the game. The graphics engine is definitely functional, but unfortunately adds relatively little to the game while exacting a fairly heavy toll on your hardware. The interface is functional, but less usable than any previous Civ. They've gone for an icon-based interface -- unfortunately, there are so many icons that look similar, there's no real way to keep them straight. Consequently, I find myself hovering my mouse over an icon and waiting for the popup help a lot, which wastes a lot of time and is annoying. The civilopedia is a complete mess for similar reasons. It's absolutely awful. The other thing I don't like is that you can right click to move units to the square you right click on. Due to other games, I'm constantly right clicking to try and pan the 3d world, and inadvertantly move my unit. There's no way to undo it either. Overall, I'm neutral on the graphics engine, and give a thumbs down to the user interface, although it's certainly functional.
But nobody plays Civ for the graphics, so let's dig into the meat of the game. By far and away the biggest change to the game is the removal of the expansionist strategy. Now, every city you create starts burdening your empire more and more, to the point where you can quickly go broke if you overexpand. As a result of that change, strategic placement becomes more important than spamming cities all over the map, especially in the early game. As a side effect of that, civilizations have less cities, and thus cities are more valuable. The second major change is that opposite Civ 3, enemy units are no longer able to enter your territory without your permission (if you haven't played Civ 3 or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, cities now generate culture points, and when you get enough culture points it expands the borders of influence around your city). This means you don't have to worry about the computer founding a city in the middle of your empire, and it also means a well placed city can act as a strategic choke point on an isthmus. Because cities are more valuable, they are much harder to capture this time around, and it seems somewhat easier to capture them via culture than in previous games. Those two changes form the core of Civ IV, and they're both definitely for the better, as they lead to more valid strategies rather than spamming the map trying to fill in every bit of land so the computer won't settle there.
Let's talk about some other important changes. First off, the tech tree is now more flexible. There's often multiple paths to get to where you want, and you don't have to learn every tech to move to the next era. This means you can completely ignore areas of the tech tree if you want -- my recent Civ had radios before they discovered theology. Second off, barbarians are much more vicious this time around. In addition to barbarian militia, there are barbarian animals. Any square that is not in your empire, and out of the line of sight of a unit can generate a barbarian unit. Consequently, when expanding early, there are barbarian units everywhere. This further reduces the effectiveness of the expansionist strategy, because you need military units for protection. It really sucks when your first scout unit gets eaten by tigers. :) The barbarians can also found cities in this game, and hold land. You can't trade with them, and the only way to deal with them is by force. In my most recent game, the barbarians founded a city in the corner of my island about 5 turns before I got a settler there, and I had to spend over 20 turns producing more military units to evict them. Religion has been added to the game as well, although you can laregly ignore it if you don't want to deal with it. But it does definitely flesh out the theological side of the tech tree a bit if you want to take that route.
The other big change is the addition of great people. Wonders now not only have a special effect and produce culture (which expands your borders), they also produce great people points. When a city accumulates enough total great people points, a great person will be born in one of five categories. There are great prophets, great engineers, great scientists, great artists, and great merchants, and which one you get depends on what type of great wonders you have been building. Each of these units can either join your city as a super-specialist (producing free food, commerce, production, research, or culture points), or has one or two special abilities. Great prophets can found a religious center if you have a religious capital (which you get for free by being the first to discover a religion), which brings in income for every city (yours or your opponents) that is that religion. This can be a significant source of income if you can convert your opponents cities to use your religion. Great engineers can help rush projects -- rushing projects is MUCH harder in this game, so this can be a huge boon. Great scientists can rush technology or found an academy that increases your tech production by 50% in a city. Great merchants can do a trade run and provide a lot of cash. And great artists are perhaps one of the coolest -- they can do what's dubbed a "culture bomb", by adding 4000 culture points to a city immediately. This takes your city to culture level 3 (out of 5) immediately, and makes your city a formidible cultural force. This is imminently useful in two areas: one, when you establish a city near new cities your opponent built, and then use the culture bomb on your city. Since your city has tons of culture and theiers has none, they'll likely revolt and join your empire before too long. The second use is when you capture your first enemy city on a new island. It's hard to keep that city because there's so much cultural pressure from other nearby cities on it. If you drop a great artists in it though, that city will be able to hold it's own, and you will have a nice base of operations that you don't have to worry about converting back to it's original nation.
All said, Civ IV is a nice evolution of the Civ line. It plays much smoother than Civ 3, and removes some of the major issues that game had. It's not a revolutionary release, rather an evolutionary one -- but still one I think is worth it, even if you own Civ 3. I give it a solid 9.0/10.
posted by Tarindel @ 8:02 AM
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