Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3146 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Take 2
• Released on: 2005-11-04
• ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Preview
Civilization is one of those games that had the unfortunate luck of being pretty much perfect the first time around. Unfortunate because it means that the developers didn’t really have much else to do for any of the sequels. Not until number three anyway, at which point they almost ruined everything by overcomplicating it.

In a nod to the graphical ability of modern day PCs the graphics have been upgraded all the way from rubbish to okay-ish. Actually, the 3D effect as you zoom out to a view of the whole globe is quite nice but otherwise this is not going to be giving Doom 3 any sleepless nights.

The far more important changes are to the gameplay which has had all the overcomplicated elements from Civ III ripped out and, most interestingly, many of the features from the original that had been considered sacrosanct. City riots and rebellions are now extremely rare and other tedious elements such as pollution have been removed. This all adds up to a tighter, faster paced game that doesn’t get bogged down once you get a lot of cities up and running.

A new team-based online modes attempts to add a similar injection of speed to the multiplayer – although whether that will prove as successful remains to be seen. More promising is a greater emphasis on religion in the game, as well as great people from history that can help morale, combat or research and sometimes all three. With strategy games becoming ever rarer Civ IV looks like it could finally make them, if not fashionable, at least popular again. -- Harrison Dent

This preview is based on an incomplete version of the game; features or problems mentioned above may not appear in the finished game.

Manufacturer's Description
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.

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Evolution of a Classic Series
I very nearly did not buy this game following all the negative vibes about getting it to run, but in the end I could not resist having a go. I really feel for all the people having so much trouble with it but I thought I should say that I have installed it and just won my first full game with no problems at all. I am running Windows XP Pro SP2 with an Athlon 64 3400+ CPU, 1GB memory and an ATI Radeon Pro 9800 128MB. One thing I have done is stuck to some old video drivers which have served me well (v6.14.10.6517). 2K games have a help site up at http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support_ati.htm which might be worth a look.

Anyhow, on to the actual review...I am a long time Civ player who can still recall sleepless nights at college with the first in the series so I will focus on the major changes from earlier versions and how they impact the experience.

- the removal of micro-management hassles (pollution, civil disorder, much better automated workers) is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is great to not have to bother but on the other it can feel as if the game "plays itself" and also means it can be easy to not keep track of cities so closely which can lead them to becoming very inefficient. You need to discipline yourself to still check in on each city frequently.

- the streamlined interface is a great improvement, with many things available on the screen at all times (of note are the sliders controlling distribution of resources between research, culture and cash) instead of tucked away in a seperate screen.

- the 3D interface is slick and smooth, it is easy to use the zoom feature to recreate a top down view (a la Civ 2) or an isometric view (a la Civ 3) or to zoom out to see the whole globe. A big improvement that is not obtrusive.

- the change from government type to five categories of "civics" each of which has five options is a great one, adding real depth and providing much more flexibility in how you run your city.

- the addition of religions is a nice touch, religions are founded in a city of the civilization that first hits a key technology and then spread automatically or via missionaries. Each other city with the religion then sends gold back to the holy (founding) city which can get quite lucrative.

- the technology tree is a lot flatter and gives you more flexibility than in previous versions, penalising you only by making it cost more and more to acquire techs if you head far up one branch instead of building a broad base.

- the diplomacy model is much better than Civ3, other leaders are far more reasonable in their demands and trades and much more balanced in not just declaring war on you as the human player when you hit the lead.

- civilization boundaries work much better, other civs can not enter your boundaries at all (unlike Civ 3 when they would keep doing so and refusing to leave unless you actually declared war) unless you sign an "open borders" agremment. Even then they can not attack you without declaring war at which point they get dumped back outside your borders.

- trade works very nicely and smoothly (better than the caravans in Civ 2) with an emphasis on founding cities on rivers and coastal squares (where they become automatically connected) and logical decisions produce trade routes generating money and sharing resources both within and between civilisations.

- on a subtle point, almost all game features require unlocking (e.g. you can't build a quarry until you discover masonary) and then interlock in a pleasing fashion (once you quarry stone construction times for several buildings and wonders are halved) which gives many more options than before for strategy.

- it is worth reading the manual that comes with the game, at least up to page 96. There are a lot of major changes to the game which you won't pick up on without it. The in-game tutorial was worth half an hour of time also.

- for decent players of Civ3 (and I am not a master by any means), the "settler" difficulty level is likely to be a walkover (I just won in 1979 on my first try without having to fight anyone through the whole game). I'd recommend starting above this. The Spanish are a nice civilization to pick as they can change civics without anarchy which gives you a good chance to experiment.

- finishing the game at "normal" speed on a "standard" map took me a total of 4 hours and 9 minutes, a far cry from the eye watering times it could take to complete a game of Civ 3.

In summary I feel I have only scratched the surface of the game and need to ratchet up the difficulty level and start to tweak more aspects of my strategy (you'll note I haven't commented on the combat system as I don't feel I have had enough experience with that important aspect of the game yet)...and I haven't dared to go online for a thrashing yet...but even from my first, full single player game I am convinced that this is an excellent evolution of a brilliant series. I only wish all the people having such trouble with getting it to work luck, once you do it is well worth it.

Still absorbing
If you want to know whether your computer will run Civ4, or are at all hesitant over making the purchase, I recommend downloading the free demo from the official site first. My laptop didn't meet the minimum requirements in terms of hardware T&L support, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually runs the game without a hitch - just as well, as I'm a huge fan of this series.

On to the game: the aim of Civ4 is, as always, to lead your civilisation through from its earliest beginnings to global domination. You can choose to play as any of 18 empires, each with its own distinct leader, attributes and special units. The game is based around a fairly simple rule set in terms of city management and unit control, but it's surprisingly deep and never fails to impress in the way it transitions seamlessly and gradually from the stone age, where you're living in thatched huts and your warriors are armed with clubs, all the way through to missile defence, modern warfare, nuclear weapons and the space race. You can't win the game at the harder difficulty levels without making trade agreements and diplomatic alliances, and generally playing your opponents off against one another, which adds further layers of intrigue and fun to the mix.

The developers wisely haven't tinkered too much with a winning formula, and most of the changes in this version, aside from the very pretty 3D graphics and the many online multiplayer modes, are based around simplifying and streamlining the game to make combat easier and cut down on the micro-management. You can now order units to explore, which speeds up the early game immensely, and you can stack military units and move them together, so engaging in warfare doesn't bog the game down so terminally and conquest becomes a more attractive option. Cities have wider influence, so it's quite possible to run a large empire now with only six or seven. Military units no longer have separate attack and defence stats, you have less direct control over the economy, and towns no longer slip into unrest when citizens are unhappy. Purists might complain about some of these changes, but the overall effect is to make the game smoother and much easier to play. Unfortunately the one thing they haven't changed is the `just one more turn' super-absorbing gameplay which can make hours pass like minutes if you're not careful. It takes a special kind of willpower to save a game midway through and tear yourself away from it, since you very quickly become hopelessly attached to your pixellated empire. Consider yourself warned..

Recommended, especially for people new to games
I've played all the versions of Civ, and games like AlphaCentauri, SimCity, and so on. This is by far the most rewarding and enjoyable version, and I'm really pleased I bought it.

The game is complex enough to capture the attention of experienced game-players, but it is also easy enough to learn from scratch that newbies should enjoy playing it.

I have bought several other games over the years, normally real-time action ones, which I find simply too complicated to understand. I'm usually dead before I've even found out which keys I should be pressing! CivIV is exactly the opposite -- there are a few items which pop up at the beginning of a turn to which you should pay immediate attention, but pretty much you can progress at your own speed without feeling pressured by the game's progress.

CivIV is much more rewarding to play then CivIII. The earlier CivII game was great, and I stopped play III and went back to the previous one. But IV has a very good mix of challenge and reward. I'm biased towards building rather than warfare, and CivIV has so many wrinkles that I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience of trying different combinations. There's a lot more flexibility in this game -- I don't simply follow one set path to victory each time, so every new game is much fresher.

One problem; I enjoy playing a very long game over a huge board. However, even though my pc is supposed to be more than adequate to run the game, if I play at the maximum board size then the game falls over in the final stages -- there's simply too much going on for my pc to handle it!

A tip: I also bought the companion guide book, which explained a lot more of the details and fine-tuning aspects of the game. I get far more out of each session using this information, so think it really is worth understanding the details to get the best from the game.

CivIV is getting scarily like life -- the more you put into it, the better it becomes...