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Genre: Turn-Based Strategy Publisher: Firaxis Developer: 2K Games Players: 1-4

By KevinG (16th Jul 2008)Build. Discover. Dominate. Inspire. Whatever about the rest, domination like you’ve never played before has finally made a proper purpose-built arrival to the console as the great-granddaddy of turn

I have been playing Civ since it arrived on the Amiga (remember that?) back at the dawn of time. It’s a testament to the quality and popularity of the franchise that it is still going, stronger than ever, 17 years later. For its console debut, Civ has been stripped down to its essential core, making it very fast paced, a lot less complicated to play, and with the addition of new animated action, more visually pleasing.

After playing the demo of the game solidly for a week, taking turns with my daughter, two thirds of our household were delighted when the full version finally arrived, while the other stared in abject horror. Game features, reviews, everything was forgotten as I quickly picked one of the 18 Civilisations, the Russians and got stuck into taking over the world. It hadn’t even reached 100AD and there was only one other civilisation left, surrounded by my armies, yet I played on until the small hours of the morning when I finally sent my space ship off to Alpha Centauri.

For the uninitiated, Civ involves the guiding of your chosen civilisation from the birth of time, 4000BC, to various types of victory: Domination – capture all the capital cities of your rivals; Cultural – attain a total of 20 great people and/or wonders; Economic – amass 20000 in your gold reserves; Technological – research the technology to build a spaceship and send it to Alpha Centauri. Your chosen civilisation will share the world with four others and you must battle your rivals and barbarians, seek hidden treasures including untold knowledge from the fabled Lost City of Atlantis, discover technology, trade goods and build the greatest cities your world has ever seen.

Each civilisation has their own starting bonuses - Romans can build half price roads, Mongols can convert barbarian villages to their own, the Spanish have Navigation, Indians can build half price Courthouses, Arabs gain interest on gold reserves, and these can develop through the Ages. Some of the civilisations also have their own specialised units, such as the Russians Cossack horsemen, the English Spitfire fighters and the Zulu Impi Warriors. All this leads to the need for careful civilisation selection before starting a game as these abilities and units can really help lead the way to victory and give the low-down on the opponents.

There are five levels of difficulty in the game: Chieftain, Warlord, King, Emperor and Deity. To win in any of them you will have to have a mixed approach, dominate when you can but keep researching technology, building up culture and boosting the gold reserves. Having vast armies will not protect your cities from cultural conversion, more advanced units decimating your troops, or spies kidnapping your great people. If you let any of your rivals build up to a dominating level they will challenge you at the drop of a hat, even if for thousands of years you have been allied. Chieftain level should not offer too much difficulty and can be dominated very easily if you are quick out of the blocks, but this tactic will not work so easily at any other level. Sometimes the map geography has a lot to do with it. I have won at King Level as the Greeks were preventing the Russians and Spanish from reaching me while I finished off the Germans, made a really good base for myself, and unleashed hordes of armies. Then again, I’ve been decimated at Warlock level as I was surrounded by all four rivals, with no good defendable positions.

The offensive/defensive units created gain special abilities as a result of victories (+50% attack for 3 victories), and then you can select from two special abilities at 6, 12, and 18 (there may be more but that’s as far as I got). Famous victories will produce Generals that are linked to the victorious army but add bonuses to any unit fighting/defending from the General’s location. Even the terrain that you are fighting from can add defensive or offensive bonuses, so choose the best positions. All the fighting is animated and can be quite comical, especially when the tanks blow units miles up in the air. There are a few bugs in the fights with units not attacking properly; they just dance beside each other without fighting. It never affected the outcome of the battle just how it looked. In one instance of mass war on the screen it slowed down considerably when and button selections were not being picked up when clicked, although this was only a once off.

A lot of the micro-management has been removed, so workers automatically do their thing and also do not need to be created anymore. They can be managed if you so wish but there is no need to be heavily involved in terraforming. The very animated advisors are constantly popping up on screen to give you advice on your culture, economics and technological advancements, information on your rival civilisations, or my favourite, threats from other leaders. They generally wrecked my head with their garbled civ-speak in the later stages of the game when they appear nearly every turn so I found it best to turn the sound for the advisors off.

The controls are, on the whole, very well set up and intuitive to use. With less to manage and quick controls you can really fly through what has to be done with one exception. It is very hard to select a specific unit without cycling through your every unit in your civilisation. This is the biggest problem I had with and though it can be annoying, if this is the only real detraction I could find with the game, I’ll easily live with it.

Maps are randomly generated at the start of each game along with starting positions and the opposition faced. There is an element of luck involved in this and its effects are more obvious the harder the difficulty level. Setting up cities in strategic positions can be vital to lock off areas in the map for your own use and ensure that you maximise the natural resources available. Buildings, which can have totally different abilities to the PC games, can then be used to make the most of the area surrounding the city. Trade Posts increase revenue from desert areas, Workshops increase production from hills, and Harbours increase food production from the sea. Any city can build a Wonder as well but they take a long time to complete. Some are vital to a successful campaign - the Leonardo Workshop instantly upgrades all units to the latest technological equivalent and is a must have while the Manhattan Project is built just for the pleasure of watching an ICBM launch and wipe out a rival city. All of this however is dependant on researching the technology so that the option to build things becomes available.

The computer AI is obviously more aggressive depending on the difficulty selected, but you can be sure of rivals demanding money if you have stockpiles or technology if you are more advanced. Getting a good defence in place is vital as it dissuades attacks and gives you the chance to advance trade, culture (it’s vital to do this when near other civilisations to stop city conversions and also create the possibility to convert rival cities) or create hordes of units for offensives. Large gold reserves will always lead to grief from the opposition but at preset levels special bonuses are received; free settler, granaries in all cities, great people, aqueducts in all cities, free banking technological advancement. Gold can also be used to speed up completion of buildings, Wonders, and units. At the start of the game most of the gold will come from attacking barbarians but later it will come from cities, trade and when great people appear, they can be used to generate money.

Great People are obtained by accumulating culture and also by researching certain technology they are connected too. There are only six different types of Great People. Their best use is to settle in a city to decrease the build resources of all buildings by half, a vital ability for success in the game. Great Leader can instantly make all units’ veterans or can be settled into a city to make all new units produced in that city veterans. It is important to protect the Great People by placing a spy in the city they are settled in so they cannot be kidnapped.

The game offers both single player and multiplayer matches. In single player you have the classic solo game against the computer AI rivals, a large selection of pre built scenarios and a game of the week that is available through Xbox Live. The game of the week cannot be saved so get settled in for a while and cancel all appointments with humanity. On Multiplayer you can set up your own private game with your friends, play unranked matches (you’ll be lucky to find anyone in this) and ranked matches. I had a go at the multiplayer and got a kicking before a disconnection saved me. Disconnections will be a major heart-break for any player, especially if they are winning. Being a turn based strategy game does have its downside in multiplayer as you will be sitting there waiting for the opposition to finish their go.

Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution is in a league of its own. It created the league a long time ago and is still number one. Now it is available to a new generation who will hopefully love it as much as all the others who played it before it hit the 360. The graphics could be smoother, the civ-speak could be a real language but it won’t take weeks of your life away any more, not at just one game at least. It’s quicker, funnier, more action packed and really, really enjoyable. In some ways it is as close to my memory of the original and the original was always my favourite. Obviously they do not compare in execution but they do in spirit. I always have doubts when playing a game I truly love. Will it appeal to a wider market? Will it just be the usual suspects playing it over and over? Then I hear my daughter say “Daddy. Can I play Civ?” and I know there is at least one new convert. If you are one of the ‘Civ is boring’ brigade, download the demo, check it out, you may very well be surprised. For the rest of us it’s just one more turn at Civ, one more turn before I shut it off.