Civilization IV

System: PC
Release Date: 2005
Published By: 2K Games
Reviewed by: Stephen
Rating:

Because neither Zelda nor Mario are officially on the PC (unless one counts Mario Teaches Typing), I can pretty safely declare Civilization the best PC game franchise ever. The games are complicated without being too complicated and deep while still being relatively easy to learn. Each game improves on the previous installments in signficant ways, and Civilization IV is the best of the lot.

The games are all turn-based strategy titles in which you lead a civilization of your choosing from a tribe in the stone age to the near future. Along the way you have to build new cities, grow your culture, harvest resources, research technology, and figure out a way to deal with your opponents, er, neighbors.

Civ IV provides several ways to win, including conquering all of your opponents, being elected ruler of the world by the United Nations (no mention if this makes you the antichrist), or being the first to launch a spaceship on an interstellar voyage. This range allows for a wide variety of playstyles and strategies to be potentially succesful, though a very crafty and unpredictable artificial intelligence will usually force you to alter your strategies as the game progresses. You can try to be diplomatic, paying tribute to the other players while funding your technological research, but if an agressive AI sees a weakness in your defenses expect a sneak attack.

One of the fun things about the franchise is the way it both mirrors history and distorts it, and Civ IV increases this dichotomy. You get to pick a leader for your civilization that influences what sort of bonuses you get. For instance, if you play America, you can be George Washington and get a bonus to your economy or be Franklin Roosevelt and get a bonus to your industry. The leaders also influence how the computer plays, so that Genghis Khan is more likely to invade another country than Gandhi. The weirdness of certain situations -- such as seeing the Incan Empire launch nukes at Persia in 1850 AD -- is pretty entertaining.

Civ IV expands on the idea of national borders and culture found in Civ III, so that a lot of problems whereby friendly nations would build cities right between two of yours are almost entirelyl eliminated. It also gets rid of a lot of annoying things, by redoing concepts such as pollution and corruption to make a more streamlined game. Basically, if something was particularly annoying in past Civ games, it's probably not in Civ IV.

The game adds some entirely new features, too, such as religions. You can found and adopt religions and these influence how other civilizations react to you. There are also great people that you can get which confer powerful bonuses. If you build Oxford University, you may find yourself with Isaac Newton who can give you a free technology boost. Optimizing cities to produce great people adds a new strategy that keeps it interesting, as a great person at the right time can really shift the course of a game.

I could rave for pages about the masterpiece that is Civ IV, but I'll try to spare you. One other thing worth noting is how much the interface has changed from the rest of the series, and for the better. The entire game can now practically be played from the main map, which saves you from having to look at a bunch of individual screens for your cities each turn. I have a few gripes, particularly about the in-game help which is terrible compared to previous Civ games, but they're fairly minor.

If you like strategy games, buy Civ IV. It's more addictive than crack and cheaper, too.

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