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Next Edition of the Greatest Strategy Game Ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 25
Date: May 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

For those who are new to the world of Sid Meier's Civilization video games, then you are in for treat. The game concept is fairly simple: you select a nationality (from American to German to Japanese to Aztec) and slowly build up a civilization through the course of history- braving wars, pioneering technology, expanding your territory through settlers, and eventually attempting to establish the world's dominant power culturally, militarily, scientifically or all three. However, the pursuit of this goal offers a large variety of options: which government to chose, which technologies to focus on, what do your military units specialize in, how many cities to found and where, what national economic policy? And the list could go on. For the first time user, these choices will seem very complex and the first game should probably be the tutorial version, which will quickly educate you in the basics of the game play. Once you've mastered the simple concepts, I highly recommend giving a full game on one of the lower difficulty settings a try. The most entertaining part of this game is experimenting with your own strategies and finding what works the best for you (there are several ways to `win' the game; military conquest, cultural preeminence, a space race, a diplomatic victory or the highest score at the final turn).

When engineering your society the nationality you choose dictates your choice of leaders, and the names of your cities. The leaders affect your society based on the attributes they inspire your people to achieve; and these attributes in turn affect how well your people work with science, economy, civics, religion, military.... For instance: Both Napoleon and F.D.R. inspire their people to build world wonders in a shorter time; Napoleon however, also excels at inspiring the military, whereas F.D.R. inspires the economy. So a French civilization under Napoleon vs. an American civilization under F.D.R. have fundamental similarities and differences that affect the game play.

Now, this choice is only the first you must make: your people demand many more. You will be deciding the degree of freedom; from serfdom to emancipation. The type of economy: mercantilism to free market to environmentalism is a choice as are the choices of political participation: free speech or fascism? Each of these choices determine the final product of your government, in stead of the old technique of choosing only "democracy" or "monarchy". This enables the player to have a range of democracy, or a range of communism (America today or Europe today? China today or the Soviet Union of yesterday?). I don't mean to focus on only democracy or communism, but they are two good examples.

Eventually you will also found religions (unrelated to the actual history of religion and its cultural geography). Again, different religions confer different benefits: each has a series of religious buildings to construct that help your society, although different religious have different prerequisites. For instance, Christianity requires more churches to build a monastery, than Hinduism to build their version of a monastery. Conquering a civilization of a different predominant religion is more difficult to maintain order in; and if you can evangelize your religion it can serve as a source of revenue and espionage- not merely the cultural and `happiness' value.

Both the elements of governance and religion depend on the level of technological advance. You won't have Islam until after Judaism and Christianity have been founded, most likely- and a true democratic government is not available until later in the game.

There are a slew of natural resources available to exploit: strategic, luxury and health. Some resources are required to build certain military units (iron, coal and steel); others are required to build wonders (ivory, marble, stone) and/or greatly speed production of certain city improvements. If you have several cities in flood plains, or other areas that confer a health penalty, the health resources become much more essential to your culture to prevent the spread of plague and disease. Once your population expands, you'll need luxury goods (wine, silk, gold) to appease your burgeoning metropolises. Again, technology will expand and contract the list of available resources: ivory and whale oil will become obsolete eventually, and wine is not available until the requisite tech is researched. Some resources, modern media, are not available until world wonders are constructed, and if you do not build the wonders first you'll end up having to barter for the "hit songs" or "movies" of your rivals.

Now, if that description doesn't perk your interest in Civ4, then it may be that you won't like this game. However, if you're starting to think how you would rule your Roman Empire, or how you'd take the Sioux to outer space first, then buy this game now. I'm fairly confident that my review thus far has provided a reasonable expectation of what the game is about. But if it is the complexity that scares you, don't worry- after a few games you'll be hooked, and even an experienced player will learn new things later on- after many, many hours of fun.

For those who've played all the game editions since the early nineteen nineties, Civ4 is a success that adds to the legacy. It continues to round out some of the nuisances of before (removing civil disorder riots and pollution squares altogether), while adding new angles and perspectives to experiment with. Unfortunately the diplomatic options have a tendency to lean toward: You versus the World; especially later in the game. I think this stems from the programming that makes the computer chose one of the various options for victory and then pursue that end relentlessly. In the real world civilizations will play to win, but there is no "end of history" that we can achieve. In the game, the computer knows that if it lands on Alpha Centauri first, the game is over- and once you hit the space race you'll not have much luck trading techs with an opponent bent on that victory path.

One critique that I'll add is this: for the first time, the newest version of the "Civ" series requires a fairly medium-high end computer. I purchased the game and play it on my one year old laptop: Centrino 1.4 GHz, 512MB Ram, no extra video acceleration. But it is a very slow process of loading the game up, and in the later turns when the world is vastly populated with units, the time between my turn and the computer's is agonizing. I've adjusted the graphics and sound accordingly, and the slowness persists. Maybe I'm just not a computer wiz enough to get the program to max efficiency- in any case, make sure you understand that the game is very graphics intense. This provides a beautiful game display at the cost of some slow turns. Now, if you have a brand new computer or one that is high end on game play stats, then don't worry.

There is an expansion coming out this summer that looks very interesting: I've read that it will add the possibility of creating `vassal states' as opposed to just conquering completely. Could add a lot to the game, since there are times when I realize that even if I sign a treaty I'll only delay the inevitable conquest of my aggressive and annoying neighbors. There will also be added nationalities and some other interesting options. So- you'll soon be afforded the opportunity to purchase more Civ. It might be better to bite the bullet, wait and get a `packaged deal' with both the original and expansion if you're playing on a budget.

In any case, Civ4 is a game you can play again and again, and you'll find yourself to start considering rationing your time on the game- so that work, school, and social life are not neglected. Well worth the money. Enjoy.

(*****) Great Graphics
(*****) Great Sound/Music esp. Leonard Nimoy narration
(****) Good Interface
(n/a) Story is up to you- the course of human history at your fingertips
(******)Excellent Replay value

combination of new and old

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 23 / 26
Date: November 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing the Civ series since the early 90's. So, needless to say, after the relative failure of Civ 3, I was really hoping Civ 4 would be a vast improvement. Civ 4 combines Civ 1 concepts, Civ 3 thinking, and other stuff that's already out there. In other words, I don't see much, if any, original thought for Civ 4. Sorry Sid, but Civ 4 is not my favorite. Far from it. From my point of view, this is what I have seen and think thus far:

1) It combines 3D pan/tilt, similar to most modern action games today. As you zoom in, the view changes. This takes a lot of processing power and memory, so you need a relatively new system to handle this game. When you're close to ground level, it instantly reminded me of the "Sims," and/or the new "Warcraft." I don't know if this is exactly a good thing, but it's all the rage. If you like that type of interaction, that's good for you. For me, it's not needed. In Civ 4, your cities expand and use land in the "north-south/east-west" concept, very similar to Civ 1. This sucks, okay? No way around it. Those that like this, get over it. This concept was left behind in Civ 1, and for good reason. When I started Civ 2, the booklet explained how the new grid system would actually give a person more land to play with. It took me one day to believe it, embrace it, and be glad that the old system was out. Civ 4 uses this very old concept, and I am not happy to see it return in this game. When your workers build roads and such, this north/south stuff starts to look even worse.

2) Combat -- what it's all about in the end. World domination has, for me, been the sole reason that I love the Civ series so much. Ever since Civ 1, I have been looking for better and better ways to do this. Civ 2 did that, at first. The WWII senario rocks (who doesn't like taking over Paris and Moscow, again and again?). Alpha Centauri made that even better. It was such a vast improvement over Civ 1 or 2 that I couldn't believe my eyes. The Spartans, what can I say? I hate playing any other faction. Okay, anyways, combat and world domination in Civ 4 (and 3) is lame. I took over more cities via my civ's growing "culture and influence" over the other civ's, then by actual combat and invasion. How I hate that. It took forever to finally ride the world of one AI player civ, and all it had was original tech for units and city improvements. When I finally had all the tech I needed, I began my reign of terror. Little did I know that archers and pikemen could damage my M1 tanks and M2 Bradley modern armored vehicles. Reminds me of Civ 1 when a battleship could be defeated, once in a while, but a pikeman or similar primitive defender! How could that happen? Hello? And, in Civ 4, the naval units can't attack cities with a coast line -- only the battleship can bombard them, for, again, "partial damage." Damn! Surprised I was when my B-2 stealth bomber only did partial damage to the guys with stone age clubs, stuck on an island for all time. I haven't nuked anyone - yet - but I'm almost afraid to know what will happen.

3) What I do like is the promotion of the units after surviving combat. What I don't like is the very limited choices in promoting my combat units. There are some choices, but I'd rather they just had more experience, became combat "veterans," and therefore had a much better chance of victory, then "+10% unit strength." Also, in case you thought that re-loading will change the outcome of bad guys killing your city defeners, think again. If the computer thinks that your city defender guy sucks, and can't stop the evil elephant hordes, then no matter what, that guy will lose. No odds of victory, walls don't help much, and having more then one defender does not ensure success. In Civ 4, the best defense is a better offense - go out and kill their units before they attack your cities.

4) Random world generator and it's terrain. Okay, this sucked in Civ 2 and 3, and now it sucks again in Civ 4. Can't get over a mountain? What is that? Desert land next to tropical jungle, then next to a regular grass plains...etc? If/when, you randomly generate a world to play, you'll get a world that sucks in terms of natural resources. Stick with playing on the Earth map, otherwise, have fun making desert grow food for you civilization.

5) The city interaction screen is not user friendly at all. There is so much that I thought would be improved, and some things are. Overall, it's just not as impressive.

6) Okay, I miss some of the micro-management. Civ 4 takes a lot of that out, so you can concentrate on peaceful trade, expansion of culture, and learning new tech with other players/computer AI players. That's about the only thing I don't like about Alpha Centauri -- after about 70 cities to take care of, it gets a little tiring to manage them all to ensure world domination.

7) Religion in the game. At first, I thought that this would be an interesting aspect to the game. I was wrong. This is only a distraction, and unless you want all cities of the same religion, and make it your "state religion" for all time, there will be little, if any, benefit. The sole benefit is working more closely with over civilizations of the same religion. If you want all your cities to be of the same religion, you must dedicate one or more cities to do this, and it takes away from everything else.

8) There is little benefit to Golden Ages (with great people), Great Wonders, or anything similar to that. When you construct a Great Wonder, you get to see a poor quality fake video representation on how the Great Wonder was built. Not nearly as good as done in previous Civs. The great wonders do not (normally) benefit all your cities or people, they mostly only increase your odds of receiving a "great person" appear in that city. I don't know what the design group for Civ 4 was thinking, but these looked rushed and do not benefit players at all.

Overall, this game is again a failure of the Civ group. I only gave it a 3-star because it is not nearly as bad as some of the other truly horrible turned based games, such as Masters of Orion 3 (that was really, really bad). If you can, get a copy of Alpha Centauri, either original or newer version, and have fun with that. Most of the time it is available on Amazon or similar website.

Also, with game bugs, I have a relatively brand new 2005 Dell XPS gaming-style system with extra memory, hard drive space, etc., and it still have trouble with Civ 4. It won't freeze up on me, but when I call it a day, it takes forever to close the game and get back to my Windows XP. Normally, I have to reboot because, for whatever reason, my system remains very slow after closing the game. Again, that sucks, and makes Civ 4 look even worse.

Overall, I would NOT buy this game brand new. Wait about another week or so, and get a used copy (there will be plenty available soon). Thanks again, and good luck with better games.

I love the game - copy protection is causing me problems, though!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 19 / 20
Date: November 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First, I've had the crash to desktop experiences that others are talking about, and my system is a P4 2.4Ghz w/512 MB RAM, and a GeForce4 Ti4200 card. The game is unplayable on larger maps after some period of time.

I'm sending NewEgg $2600 to build a newer computer, although I was able to play Doom3 (barely) and Half Life 2 (well) with my existing one. Seems silly that a Civilization game caused me to upgrade!

The game: I like the game itself. Religion is interesting, though limited. I like the ability to see other cities that share my religion. That's a feature that people haven't mentioned much. The epic and accelerated time scales are very nice - I can play fast or slow, depending on my mood and available time. Cool.

My biggest gripe? I have constant issues with the play disc being recognized. It tells me to insert my CD, when it already is. This happens whether it is in my DVD-ROM, my DVD-RW, my CD-RW, or a virtual drive. And yes, I know about the mislabeled Play disc.

It turns out that the SafeDisc garbage that they use for copy protection is "blacklisting" me for running Alcohol 120%, and preventing me from running the program. Removing Alcohol isn't an option, since I use the virtual drive features daily for work. It's interesting that it blacklists me when I have the disc loaded in a physical drive! It was a real pain to get it installed. I almost sent it back, but on the 6th try, it finally installed.

If you run into this issue, just use something like SafeDisc4 Hider, and then you can play your legally purchased game. Search for sd4hide.exe. Good luck. I really hate being treated like a criminal when I've purchased every version of the Civilization series since Civ I.

Once I get my rockin' new computer, I'll see if the crash to desktop issues on large maps get better. Until then, I highly recommend finding the option in the Ini file to make the game autosave every turn. That was a real difference maker for me.

*** Edit
After getting an updated computer, and waiting for a couple of patches, this game is now awesome. I change my rating to 5 stars across the board. The DRM foobar with safedisc is easy enough to get rid of with a simple No-CD patch. Yeehah! Nirvana. Also, the Warlords and Beyond the Sword expansions are great!

Play no Civ before its time...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 17
Date: November 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have a 2.6GHz processor with 2GB of RAM and an nVidia GEforce 5500 FX video card. The game was initially a huge disappointment due to the agonizing lag time. 2K games really dropped a bomb by releasing such a buggy product.
That said, they have now released a patch (v1.09). By installing the patch, updating my video driver, and reducing the graphics to 'medium' I finally have this game playing at a decent speed. The patch still hasn't worked for a lot of people, though, judging by the messages on Civ fansites.
Civ 4 has a lot going for it, and I am having fun with all the new features now that it is working on my machine. Check that your system meets the RECOMMENDED specifications (not minimum), and give the game a try. You can always send it back.

Civ 4 does not dissapoint

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 35 / 47
Date: October 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm not gonna take all night writing a review because i need to get some work done so i can play again. So basically this game expands all of the previous Civ concepts and adds awesome new ones. Everything is better looking and easier to use. Simply placing the cursor over anything tells you what you need to know. A new concept knows as civics allows the player to adjust the government, legal system, labor system, economy, and religion of your civ... and it only gets better from there. Combat systems are easier and more realistic in nature (no more spearman damaging a tank). Combat upgrades allow you to groom specialized units (i.e. +25% when seiging cities, +10% strength). Countless adjustments have been made to increase the relevance of alliances. This game has too much to list. I'm a poor college student and even i can afford the $50 release date cost, and it was worth it.

One gripe, and the reason for 4 stars instead of 5: This game badly needs a patch. It has crashed 5 times already in a 5 hour period... it could be my comp, but it happens the same way each time. No other game or program I own causes fatal system errors like this.

Like they say - wait for the patch

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 22 / 25
Date: November 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a huge fan of Civ II and Civ III, I was excited to get this (on sale no less) - and then horrified that I couldn't play it.

I have two pretty decent computers. For one, I added a new video card specifically for this game. I still haven't got it to work on either one, and both are well above the minimum requirements for the game.

Here's the rundown of problems:
-Couldn't install the version of DirectX that they include on the disk. Normally this wouldn't be a problem (you can get it free online)...BUT this particular version had game-specific files that are necessary for the game to start up.
-I pulled those files off the disk manually and dumped them into the proper folder, solving that problem. HOWEVER, I then had issues with the video card - this game does have quite a few problems with ATI cards, which MANY computers have.
-I went online to try to troubleshoot these issues. The game's official website has a little bit of help, which I understand does solve some peoples' problems. Not mine, unfortunately. Eventually, I got the game to start up...but there were serious video problems, rendering the game nearly unplayable.
-One minor problem: My Special Edition came with a French tech tree map. This one is only a minor inconvenience, as they will send you an English version for free.

What I will say is that they seem to have done a great job. The gameplay looks like it's significantly enhanced from Civ III, and they've added a lot of new features. The help desk person was obviously overworked, but still polite and did his best to help.

My advice: unless you've got a super-new computer and/or are prepared to do a lot to get this thing to work, wait until the patch(es) comes out.

Wait for patch

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 19
Date: November 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

... Wait for the patch and its going to be a large one. This game is full of bugs that will make the game crash or freeze your PC. Minimum requirements are not the cause. One bug that I'll give to the programmers. When you take a city and have troops waiting on a square to get a settler over, if a friendly Civ comes over and puts down a city. The city name will be something like "TXT_CITY_NAME_BELOX" i.e the code has not been beta tested. Is this why I giving it a bad rating? NO. I could live with little bugs but the crashing and freezing is almost every turn once you get in the later stages of the game.

Overall: Good game if they get it right. Should never have released it in its present form. Wait for the fix. Or maybe its so bad it needs a recall? Dont know but this is the most disappointing CIV ever.

WOW - This game is deeply moving

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 20
Date: February 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Truly a soul-touching experience, this is the kind of heady feel-good gaming that will keep you playing for a full day until the wee hours of the morning. Granted that the lifespan of Civ4 is incredibly short-lived, the experience of playing it once is worth the price of the game alone and possibly a PC upgrade (that most will need). Yes it does push even high spec machines, your hardware will want to be in good order to run it and certainly you should at least be using the v1.52 patch (you must download it from the internet) to have a bug free gaming experience (that still has some minor bugs) the fact is that the game is so vast and so big, these minor glitches are easily overlooked once you get into the swing of things.

Spanning some 3000 years between 1000 BC and 2000 AD you go through every civilization from the dawn of early man to the creation of a space station, with Spock (Leonard Nimoy) narrating, you can build worlds that will eventually compete in military campaigns with one another, the volume of historical information, famous quotes and important pieces of history all mash together to the point of having a modern tank squad up against Roman horseback spearmen, it puts the world we live in today into such clear perspective that this is one of the best family friendly games, not to mention game, of all time. Civ4 is truly an astonishingly experience in every sense of the word. You will get a history lesson, see the world in whole new way and have some of the best fun ever. It doesn't get much better than Civ4!

Pros:
- Leonard Nimoy's narration!
- Intellectual Gaming.
- Fantastic world development.
- The best TBS.

Cons:
- Needs patching.
- Requires high system spec.
- Speed freaks lack the patients needed to play the game.

Bug-o-rama

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 44 / 68
Date: November 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

"Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up"
--Shakespeare Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1

Buggy and slow

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 22
Date: November 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

For every good review you read, you must realise this game has major problems. I am running the following

AMD 4000+
1gb PC 3200 ram low latency
s-ata hard drive
Nvidia 6800 ultra 256mb graphics card

The game is still too slow, and if I can't run it who can? Yes I have the game turned up on full graphics but my computer should be able to handle this easily. To top it all off, i was given the world map and suddenly the overload of information crashed the game on the next turn, followed by the fact I can no longer load any of the saved games of that session, it just crashes. Also please make a note of the hardware I am using, the wonder movies are jerky, the sound cuts out for 70% of the movie. I can play doom 3 perfectly but I can't play CIV IV

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