Civilization IV is the latest version of a classic turn-based strategy game (originally released in 1991) by game icon Sid Meier.  As a player you command a primordial Civilization through thousands of years of history to become the supreme Civilization of the world.  You have to carefully balance exploration, expansion, development and conquest in order to accomplish this.  Place too little emphasis on any of these and you will fail.

I got the Special Edition for the same price as the regular game ($49.99 US)

The Special Edition includes:

• Two game disks
• A thick (224 pg.) instruction manual
• A fold-out keyboard command reference
• A technology and specification charts poster
• A soundtrack disk

Installation was easy, and took about fifteen minutes with one disk swap.  Interestingly, it seems that you play the using game disk 1 (marked Install disk)  (So disk 2 (marked Play disk) is not actually the Play disk.)  It installed to the Firaxis Games Program item.

First thing I did after installing was to check for updates—it does not include an Update item in the Program menu, so you have to check manually.  Nothing posted at www.civiv.com as the evening of 26-October.  With that, I fired up the game.

The introductory film was decent, a pan-down from the Moon to Earth’s surface, with cities in locations you’ll recognize sparkling as the view gets closer.  It zooms onto an ancient naval battle, camera moving rapidly to a Roman or Greek city siege.  The battle is won and a king coronates himself.  It lacked the Universality of previous versions—it was set in a single era and focused on a single Civilization.

Veteran players will be happy that this version includes multi-player in the very first launch.  (I and III launched as single-player games.  I am not 100% certain, but I think II was single-player at first too.)  Hopefully it works…Civ III was plagued with problems with it’s early multi-player system—which cost $35.00 US, if I recall correctly—and it took several patches to make it stable enough to use.  Multi-player wasn’t perfected until Civ III: Conquests was released, and it was another $35.00 US upgrade.

It looks like the editing tools are available within the game itself (III required one to launch the editor from the Program items menu.)  I haven’t checked these out yet.  The developers promise that the editing tools are much better than those developed for Civ III.  Hopefully they are serious because the lack of easy modability was a major disappointment for Civ II fans.  (Civ II is legendarily modable.)

I started with the Tutorial, which features Sid Meier talking players through the earliest stages of a tiny world game as Rome.

For those of you who have played Civilization III, game play is practically the same.  The controls are a little different—most significantly (and annoyingly) right mouse click functions as the selected unit’s Go-To button.  In Civ III the right mouse click re-centered the map.  Two or three times in the tutorial I would instinctively right click to center the screen—and accidentally move a unit towards that space, wasting it’s movement. 

Otherwise you should be able to jump right in.

The map resembles a Real-Time Strategy game map.  It’s truly 3D—I think you can spin the map around any way you like and zoom in and out. 

Unfortunately, it’s not clear how to do this on the screen so I just adapted to whatever view the game gave me rather than manipulating it.  At it’s core the map is a grid of terrain types—Grassland, Hills, Desert, Plains—each of which produces a certain amount of resources (Food, Gold and Production.)  Some have special resources, required to build certain military units or that improves the productivity of the square.  Almost every terrain type can be improved or changed with the proper technology and a Worker unit.

You have several units at your disposal—Settlers, which build cities; Workers, which improve terrain; and various land, sea and (in modern times) air Military units.  The land and sea units move across the map like Kings in a game of Chess, but with varying rates of movement (e.g. one or two or more spaces/turn.)  By using Settlers to found new cities your Civilization gains access to more resources and can develop faster and support bigger armies.  Having more cities means you can build more units each turn too, enabling you to out-produce your rivals.

Military units have only one Strength stat—no more separation into Attack and Defense categories.  Instead, the designers gave units “special abilities” to simulate situational advantage.  And instead of upgrading though generic “Hit Point” ranks based of combat experience units are now awarded “Promotions.”  These give the unit a special ability or combat modifier.  Players choose each units’ specialty.

It looks like air combat is handled as it was in Civ III, with planes flying missions rather than moving around the screen as land and sea units. 

Bombardment (artillery attacks from an adjacent square) seems to have been adopted from Civ III as well.

I think that the tutorial is very well done.  I was not able to get it to crash or freeze.  I never got lost because Sid Meier’s latest instruction was always in view (although sometimes blocking access to command functions.)  Many of the commands are deactivated until it is time to use them.  I’m still not 100% used to how it’s laid out.  There are lots and lots of tiny buttons, and by scrolling over them the purpose of each is revealed.  However the purpose indicator flashes in the lower left-hand part of the screen—very consistent but often not near the button I am focusing on.

This is an extremely visual-symbology based game.  The Civilopedia (which is not accessible during the tutorial) is organized into an overwhelming number of icons.  You’ll have to scroll over each one (although they are in Alphabetical order) to learn it’s topic.

One of the foundations of the game is technological research.  You’ll have to spend gold over several turns to develop new techs.  If you don’t your civilization will fall behind your rivals and eventually you’ll be conquered.  The Technology Tree is now divided into Six eras - most of the techs from earlier games are back.  It looks like the present/near future era is greatly abbreviated since Civ III.

Another core concept is government.  As you discover them (through research) you can increase your efficiency dramatically by changing your government… but each time you change it you must endure a period of anarchy.  During that time you produce nothing (in the tutorial anarchy only lasted a turn each time I did it—maybe that’s because the difficulty setting is low, or maybe early shifts don’t take much time to resolve.) The governments are now divided into several social categories (if you’re familiar with it—it’s similar to the way government worked in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri) so you can experiment with mixing and matching various elements.

Religion is a new game concept.  By being first to discover a particular technology your Civilization gains access to a Great Religion (the first is Buddhism) which makes citizens happy.  (It looks like you have to have some type of religion to build Temples, for instance.)  Adopting a religion briefly sends your society into anarchy, as it does when you change governments.

Civilizational traits (introduced in Civ III) and Unique Units made it into the latest version.  The Civs are American, Arabian, Aztec, Chinese, Egyptian, English, French, German, Greek, Incan, Indian, Japanese, Malinese, Mongolian, Persian, Roman, Russian and Spanish.

Behind the scenes culture and trade are handled as in Civ III.  Upkeep for units and buildings seems to be the same as in Civ III.

All in all I think this version is very promising.  It seems to have retained the best elements of Civ III, improved the graphics and fleshed out areas where previous versions were weak.  I think I’ll get used to the stark iconic controls pretty quickly.  I do wish that the designers had given us the ability to select multiple units with a scroll-box (standard in most RTS games)—I was sure that they would but it doesn’t look like they did.

I hope that the development tools and multi-player work as promised.  The multi-player should be okay, but I’m skeptical of the development tools.  I just don’t think that a game with 3D graphics can ever be easy enough to use to recapture Civ II’s extreme modability.  That’s the price you pay for the prettier graphics.