So much to blog about, so little time

Our regular readers have probably noticed a marked decline in post quantity lately, as everyone here at SRV is currently struggling with a massive set of overlapping deadlines which have left very little time for even playing computer games, much less blogging! On the other hand, these same regular readers have probably also noticed that we've finally upgraded to the new version of Blogger, so you should expect some gradual changes through the spring and summer as we discover Blogger's new features.

Some quick news items of note:

• The extremely exciting news that another expansion pack for Civilization IV entitled Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is on the way. This pack will apparently include a number of general upgrades to the core gameplay. The Civilization Fanatics Forum (among others) has a more lengthy product description here. Although it appears like this pack won't address some of what we regard as the most glaring omissions from Civ IV (namely, the lack of "Future Tech" items like solar system space colonization and ocean floor resource development), all of the changes we've heard about are extremely welcome. As you might expect, we're the most excited about the new changes to the space race victory, which definitely seem like a return to the Civilization II style of space race victory.
  
• A new version (0.62) of the timeless classic The Ur-Quan Masters (aka Star Control II) has been released, including support for multiplayer SuperMelee! Go download it! Still no word on whether Activision has greenlighted a proper sequel yet, though.
  

Finally: A Civ IV Tech Tree Editor!

One of the Civilization IV mods that I've been most interested in seeing has finally emerged--a Tech Tree Mod! I've been really looking forward to twiddling extensively with the tech tree. This should be interesting! One wonders if this could be a way for more Future Tech type technology, like solar power satellites and lunar Helium-3 mining. Congrats to TheLopez, the enterprising coder who put this together. The next item on the SRV wishlist is the Alpha Centauri mod, the development of which appears to have unfortunately stalled.

An Epic Review of Civilization IV (Part 3)

This review is so long (ironically, just like a game of Civ IV) that it has been broken up into three posts. This is Part 3. You can visit Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

In this part of my Civilization IV review, we’ll discuss in detail some of what I feel are the game’s principal shortcomings, beginning with the major lack of new content.

The trend in previous Civilization games has been increasing complexity, while preserving fun and entertaining gameplay. Civilization II had many more features and content than Civilization I, and Alpha Centauri had many more features and content than Civilization II. However, the increasing complexity was always done in such a way that it was fun, and I really appreciated how each new release added more and more stuff. It provided a lot of strategic options for the player, thus making it interesting and replayable. That’s the reason why I kept coming back to Civilization, replaying it frequently, and upgrading with gusto as each new release and expansion pack came out.

That trend was well and truly ended with Civilization III. There wasn’t really any major new content, and since they tried to simplify the game, a lot of game elements were removed (as evidenced by the simplistic space race victory mode). As a consequence, I felt that Civilization III was far less engaging and replayable than its predecessors, and displayed a notable lack of creativity, especially when compared to SMAC. So, I was hoping that Civilization IV would have significant new content. However, I was supremely disappointed with what was actually included in Civilization IV. Besides the graphical eye-candy, the only truly new gameplay component is religion. I therefore think that Civilization IV seriously missed the boat when it came to new content in general (I covered some specific gameplay-related issues in Part 2), but this is especially true when it comes to a certain class of content that I'll call “The Longer Reach of History.”

The Vision Thing: One of the most fun things about Alpha Centauri was that it was a well-thought out, carefully researched extrapolation of future technologies and social trends. One of the things that supremely disappointed me about previous Civilization games is that they all stop at 2050. You don't get to see the starship land, you don't get to build maglevs, or fusion reactors, or photon computers, or hypersonic aircraft, or fuel cells, or lunar colonies, or undersea habitats, or reusable space launch vehicles. I want to see what the future is like, and how decisions I made in the 3rd century B.C. affect that future. Will my nation look like Blade Runner, or like Star Trek’s San Francisco, circa 2364? How will orbital bombers affect political and military relationships on this planet? Will new technologies like methane hydrate extraction and asteroid mining reduce or enhance global conflicts?

Now, this is a contentious issue on the Civ forums. There's a vocal contingent of people (for the sake of anonymity, we’ll just call them the “ignorant luddites”) who feel that the game is a historical recreation of human history, and future techs absopositively do not belong in Civilization, ever. Their arguments can be distilled to two points: 1)That they don’t think that “Future Techs” like lunar colonies will ever happen, and therefore shouldn’t be in Civilization or b) extending the game out to the far future would impose having to learn a complicated and tedious tech tree on the player, thus making it less fun. Point A is demonstrably untrue; we’ll get to that later. Point B does have some small degree of validity. The SMAC tech tree is probably the biggest single reason why veteran Civilization players didn’t like SMAC. I say “small” because all you had to do to understand the tech tree was read the Datalinks about the tech in question and/or look at the handy tech tree poster that shipped with the game, and you’d be all set. Just another example of how people irrationally fear change.

My considered response to the Point A is a firm “tbbbpffft.” I encounter luddites frequently, and to be blunt I pity folks who don't want to see what's over the next hill. The future is going to happen, and it’s also going to be where you’ll be spending the rest of your life. If a SMAC-style extrapolation to the year 3000 is too daunting, then you could make the cutoff, say, 2200 and still have an entertaining and plausible extrapolation to some limited set of future technologies and social trends. I'm told that the Activision Civilization series tried to do this, but since I never played those games I'm not sure how successful they were (scuttlebutt is, not very). In a nutshell, what I really, really wanted to see in Civilization IV was some sort of melding of the Civilization Tech Tree with the SMAC tech tree, as well as the inclusion of an undersea colonies and space development system that improved on the SMAC feature set. Now, that would have been cool.

Unfortunately, Civilization IV is even more minimalistic and nihilistic than Civilization III. In many respects, it has a lesser scope than the original game! You can build the space elevator, which really doesn't do that much, and research an aptly though uninspiring named “Future Tech”. Real imaginative, guys. The game still ends at 2050. There's no provision for stuff like fusion power. If you were expecting ocean settlements, like in Alpha Centauri, you'll be disappointed. There’s also no provision for OTEC power plants, manganese mining, and methane hydrate extraction. Ditto for maglevs, fusion plants, or any of the other technologies that we will be able to see for ourselves over the next few decades.

Space is our civilization’s future...too bad it's not in Civilization: Which brings us to the High Frontier (you knew this would pop up sooner or later, didn't you?). I've always been profoundly bugged about the fact that you can send a ship to Alpha Centauri but you can't colonize the Moon or Mars in Civilization. Here in real life, the Moon and Mars have been there for the taking since 1972 and we haven't done squat. Alpha Centauri voyages are at least 50 years away, and will almost certainly require an extensive infrastructure in cislunar space to make it happen (or, to put it another way: Thriving communities on the Moon, Mars, the Trojans, and the asteroids will begat thriving communities in other star systems).

Space development is the classic disruptive technology. When the United States succeeds in making space an accessible realm of human economic endeavor, we'll reap some pretty significant rewards that will transform our society: unlimited power from space solar power stations, unlimited materials mined from asteroids, super strong alloys created in microgravity factories, a virtually unlimited supply of platinum-group metals for fuel cells....I'll stop there, but there's a million more. Space is important. Whether Western civilization will survive depends entirely on whether or not, over the next few decades, we succeed in opening the High Frontier. Due to simple incompetence and lack of will, it’s quite possible that we won’t, and then our lives will all get a lot worse rather quickly.

Since the long term survival of our civilization depends on our development of space, it is therefore completely appropriate for space development and settlement to be part of a Civilization game. Now, I’m not alone in wanting to see this, because this is one of the most-requested features for the Civ games. In fact, I remember seeing an editorial in the short-lived Egghead Software Magazine suggesting that space development should be a part of Civilization back in 1992. It's even in the List of Lists mentioned in Part One. I'm therefore surprised that it hasn't been put in yet, except for a limited implementation in SMAC, which actually had orbital power systems, hydroponic facilities, and asteroid mining built in. It was primitive, but it was there. I gather that the first Call to Power game had a space colonization component, but apparently it wasn't very good, because it's frequently cited as the best reason to not include it in Civilization!

To that, I say, “Poppycock!” There's lots of ways that one could unobtrusively add space development to Civilization, you just need to be creative. For example, you could have a space solar power system be a Wonder that provides free energy to your civilization. You could do what SMAC did, and have space mining colonies be components built and launched from individual cities. You could have the first Civ to get to an asteroid receive unlimited resources.

You even could simulate the whole thing (although I’ll admit that this would probably work better as part of its own standalone game), unlocking it when you hit that point on the tech tree. You could build O’Neill habitats at the Lagrange points, lunar colonies, and start to terraform Mars, while simulating the population growth and the trade routes (lunar solar power to Earth for funds, lunar oxygen to the space stations, super strong materials to Earth and the Moon, etc.) The colonies would have a more limited set of city improvements and could increase your civilization size total. The space colonies would "unlock" the research of more technologies (microgravity-produced materials and pharmaceutical products) and Wonders like space solar power systems that would give your terrestrial civilization definite advantages. The fancy 3-d globe view in Civilization IV could have been used to zoom out to see a view of the solar system and would allow you to click on various planets or points in space, which would bring up a more traditional Civilization world interface for each point, a lot like Sierra's classic "Alien Legacy" (like in the screenshot at left). Heck, you could even have an option for a “traditional” Civilization game, letting the luddites turn off all of this future tech and space stuff to keep them happy. There seems to me to be a lot of gaming potential here, and I while think it’s clear that a standalone Civilization in Space product would be an incredibly fun and rewarding experience to play with an amazing array of strategic choices, there certainly exists opportunities to add Future Tech and space development to a more traditional, terrestrially-centered Civilization game.

Unfortunately, none of this applies to Civilization IV. You can build a space elevator, but there's still no provision for Lunar or Martian colonies, asteroid mining, O'Neill colonies, space factories, or X-40 style orbital bombers in Civilization IV. Granted, if you have a space elevator, then all the rest of this stuff will happen in due course, which was probably in the back of the designer’s minds. Still, that's not as much fun as doing it yourself.

Although I understand that the designers wanted to keep things simple, I think that they really missed the boat on this one. There must be a fun way to add this “Longer Reach of History” content, including an expanded tech tree, a significant space settlement and development component, future weapons, and projected social trends to a terrestrially-centered Civilization game, without it being dull and tedious. Firaxis had a chance to create an epic and inspiring game about humanity's inevitable spread into the Universe that surrounds us, and they blew it. They're now going to get beaten to the punch by Spore, which already looks like it's going to be a very special game. I expect and hope that enterprising modders will start adding more future technology components, including space colonization, to the game now that the SDK is out.

A Mod World: The answer to the missing content and gameplay issues raised above is going to be the game's modability and extensibility. I’m a big fan of game mods; Mods for UT2004 have really expanded the longevity of that title, and in the case of Orbiter, for example, have dramatically added to its the content and usefulness. So, I am very happy that Civilization IV was built from the ground up to support modding and includes native support for XML and Python. Almost all aspects of the game can be changed. Now that the SDK has been formally released, I expect the quantity and quality of mods to dramatically increase. I also expect that many of my problems with the gameplay and content will eventually be rectified by mods. The best place to get mods, of course, is the Civilization Fanatics Forum Creation and Customization section, where there’s lots and lots of good stuff.

Modding is great, so why is it in this section? The reason is managing the mods is a real chore. The model for supporting fan-made mods is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. FS2004 has a really neat interface that let’s you add mods to the game, pick the ones you want to play with (you can pick as many as you want, and they’re persistent across gaming sessions), and tells you of potential conflicts if you’re running more than one, all from within the game. By contrast, much of the Civ IV modding is done by adding files in Windows Explorer and/or modifying text files, you can only run one mod at a time from within the game, and when you start a mod it requires a game restart. That’s annoying. If Civ IV was the first game that supported mods, I would go easy on it, but here in the 21^st century, an FS2004-style mod management screen isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.

Bugs...lots of 'em: This brings me to the technical issues, which are the biggest single problem with this game. When the game first came out, I experienced repeated crashes and memory leaks. It was unplayable. The first patch helped things a little bit, but serious problems persisted for me until the 1.52 patch released Christmas Eve. Now, in a post-1.52 patch world, when game year 1900 comes along, I still start to experience severe memory leaks, video stutters, and hang-ups. Needless to say, it's massively annoying and frustrating, especially since with my build-gobs-of-infrastructure-then-smush-my-opponents-with-modern-armor style of play most of the action happens near the end of the game. I suspect that I would enjoy this game more if it didn't make me wait for 10-15 seconds before every unit movement or battle resolution. The typical answer to this problem on the forums seems to be “Buy more RAM,” which I suppose might be considered by some a valid solution. BUT, in my opinion, if you meet the minimum hardware requirements for a game, it should run just fine at a low or even medium graphical detail setting. You may have to turn off some eye-candy, but with all the settings dialed down it should run very smoothly in all situations. In my case, my machine easily exceeds the hardware settings listed on the Civilization IV box, and it still runs slower than molasses in February, even with all of the graphics settings dialed down to their minimum. I regard this as completely unacceptable. 2K/Firaxis actually had an extensive public beta for the game, which should have ironed out most if not all of the technical problem. Astonishingly, the beta test did not. I wish that Firaxis had been a little less aggressive with their hardware requirements, and had also tested the game on more laptops and low-end systems in order to iron out the kinks for those of us without liquid-cooled dual-core Falcon V Athlon FX-62 SLI RAID systems. Since the 1.09 patch pushed the onset of severe memory leaks back to the 1800s and the 1.52 patch pushed the leaks back to the 1900s I'm hoping that the 1.61 patch will push them into the 2000s. [UPDATE: Nope, memory leaks still there with the 1.61 patch...guess I'll see how the next patch does….]

Conclusion: If it sounds like I have conflicting opinions about Civilization IV, I do. I give the designers a lot of kudos for reevaluating the user experience from the ground up. I really can't blame them for not trying new things. There really is a lot to like in this game, including: The simplified new game interface, the ability to zoom out and see the whole planet, the new civics screen, the refined emphasis on culture and scientific research, the replacement of the pollution with the much more fun “health” metric, the return of wonder movies, religions, improved enemy AI, and extensive built-in mod support.

I really do like some of the design changes, but for every cool thing they put in, either they changed something that I liked or put in something I didn't like, including: The “and/or” tech tree, the snarky civilopedia, the useless advisor screens, the “Diplomatic Spreadsheet” that takes most the fun out of negotiations with AI players, the unrealistic nuclear weapons, the non-unique artwork for civilization units, guys with pointy sticks can still defeat B-2s, there's no throne room or palace, the on-orbit assembly version of the space race victory is still MIA, excessive hardware requirements, and it still has significant technical problems, even after three patches.

By most reasonable metrics, Civilization IV is a good and (mostly) fun game. Despite the preceding rants, I actually like it quite a bit. But I also strongly feel that it’s missing something. Civilization IV doesn't include features that I and other fans have been waiting for a long time to see, including better military management, dual production queues, a longer reach of history, an expanded tech tree, futuristic military units, undersea colonies, and space development. This complete lack of major new content is a severe shortcoming of the game. I think that Firaxis/2K really missed the conceptual boat by not turning outward and melding Civilization with Alpha Centauri, especially with Spore on the way. Instead, they turned inward, simplifying and narrowing the focus of the game, and in the process I feel that they stripped a lot of the game's personality and character away. In addition, I strongly feel that the move to a 3-d graphics engine, while having impressive results on high-end systems, unnecessarily imposed excessive hardware requirements on the 99.9% of us who don't have dual-core gaming powerhouse machines while causing a bevy of technical problems with the game--without actually improving the gameplay.

Is Civilization IV better than Civilization III? It's different, but not necessarily better. Is it better than Civilization II? Nope. Is it better than Alpha Centauri? Definitely not. Is it fun? Yes. Do I like Civilization IV? Yes, and I play it frequently, but I strongly feel that it's a few patches and several mods away from being the game that it could be. Is Civilization IV worth buying? Maybe. More than any other game I think I've ever played, my answer to the question “Should I buy Civilization IV?” would be “It depends”. If you are someone who has always been put off by the complexity of the Civilization series, now is your big chance to try it. If you loved Civ I, Civ II, and SMAC, Civ IV is different enough that you might be put off. In any case, you should download the demo and see if it works well with your hardware, as well as meshes with your individual tastes and expectations. You'll probably like it, but there's also a decent chance that you won't.

Be sure to also read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, as well our story about a three day multiplayer Civilization IV match, Juliraptor's discussion about how to mod and patch Civilization IV, and her impressions of the game. Photo Credit: Civilization IV Fansite Kit/Firaxis.


Tags: Civilization IV

An Epic Review of Civilization IV (Part 2)

This review is so long (ironically, just like a game of Civ IV) that it has been broken up into several posts. This is Part 2. You can visit Part 1 here and Part 3 here.

The Game: The game opens with Leonard Nimoy narrating the same opening cards with the same music that opened the original Civilization several lifetimes ago. It's a really nice touch, especially for those of us who spent lots of time with the original game. Civilization IV is quite different from its predecessors. They did make a real effort to redefine the user experience by taking out many things that were annoying, such as pollution, but unfortunately they also put in some pretty annoying stuff (we'll get to that later). In general, I think that its safe to say that while Rise of Nations was an attempt to add Civilization to the RTS format, Civilization IV is an attempt to add RTS elements to Civilization. Civilization IV can be seen as a direct response to Rise of Nations, a valiant attempt to broaden the user base by simplifying the gameplay and adding some RTS-style elements.

Interface: The main game window where you'll spend most of your time has been cleaned up and simplified tremendously, and amplified with some snazzy (though excessively resource hogging) 3-d graphics. I really like the way that you can zoom all the way out to see your planet from space; that's a nifty feature (although they didn't take it to its logical conclusion...we'll pick up that rant in Part 3). Although I would rate the main game interface as “Vastly Improved” I would have to rate the advisor screens as “useless;” for whatever reason a lot of the functionality which was there previously is now gone, and it's really annoying. Again, it's a small thing, but I appreciated the concept of giving your advisors a face and a personality-it made things seem more real. That's all gone here; it's like I'm interacting with Lotus-1-2-3, with a lot less functionality, I might add. I'll call out the “Military Advisor” for an especially severe taunting, because they took out the ability to upgrade your units from the advisor screen. You now have to go and hunt down individual units in cities and upgrade them one by one, an incredibly taxing experience. The same story repeats itself throughout the city advisor screens: The functionality and personality from previous Civilization games is gone, replaced with a seemingly detailed spreadsheet that aren't really that useful. We'll put that down as an “I hope they fix it with the expansion pack” kind of deal. Fortunately, enterprising modders have already begun to tweak the advisor screens.

City Management: Improving city management has been one of the most commonly requested features for Civilization IV. This is one thing that Civ III tried to do, but didn't succeed at. Even though the support costs were still borne by a single civilization budget, you had to do a lot of twiddling in each city to control what your civ's production was--a dumb system. There was nothing more frustrating than the "Tenochtitlan can't support..." message. Well, city managment in Civilization IV is quite a different than that in Civ III. The "Governor" function has been discontinued in favor of some simple settings for each city--you can maximize production or research, for example. You can access most of the basic city functions directly from the main screen, without having to zoom into the city view. When you zoom into the city view, it is very similar to the traditional Civilization city management screen (although you can no longer see a picture of what your city looks like; you now see the city and all of the Wonders in the main 3-d view).

Did they cut down on the twiddling? Well, mostly. You no longer have to mess with adding entertainers and physicians to the mix to keep your citizens happy; cities no longer riot (all though they do become unhappy, which lowers production) and instead of pollution, there's now a health metric; industrial cities will be significantly less healthy than smaller cities, which can lead to unhappiness and a decline in production. That's all well and good. However, the unit production is still rather twiddle intensive. Although there is a fairly easy way to have global unit production queues, the cities are different enough that you have to go to each one separately and adjust production. There's no point in having an outlying outpost of the Empire spending 50 turns building a warrior, after all. I was actually very surprised that they chose not to implement the system from Galactic Civilizations, where each colony has dual "social" and "military" production queues, allowing you to both mobilize and improve your civilization. That is one of the real strengths of GalCiv. That's a lot more realistic than the way it's presented in Civilization. In real life, for example, Detroit is not only the automotive and industrial automation capital of the world, but all U.S. military tanks are produced there as well. I'll go ahead and place my vote for dual production queues in Civilization V right now!

Intelligence: One of the things I appreciated about previous games was their emphasis on setting up a quality Foreign Service and Intelligence networks, including embassies; for the most part, that has been deemphasized in this game. Many of the functions of the spies have actually been taken over by the priests and temples. The spy unit in Civilization IV is primarily used for the recon of enemy territory.

Diplomacy: The AI in the game is definitely improved over Civilization III; you can now peacefully coexist with at least some of your neighbors, GalCiv style. However, although at first I appreciated the Spreadsheet-like list of your negative and positive attributes in the eyes of the foreign leader that you're talking to, now I'm not a big fan. It makes things too easy; you now know exactly where you stand with everyone without any of the ambiguity that characterizes real-world diplomatic interactions. Despite all the glitzy 3-d avatars for the civilization leaders, they feel much less real to me than the faction leaders in SMAC--Instead, I feel like I'm fighting Microsoft Excel. Plus, inexplicably, you cannot issue demands to the AI any longer. In the old games you could ring up the AI and demand tribute or cities, often outrageously, but now the game selects what you can demand for you. Basically, I felt that you are now limited to simply reacting to your opponents. I rarely issued ultimatums in previous games but now that I can't I really miss this feature.

Conflict and Battles: Many of the interviews and pre-release hype focused on how they were revamping and improving the military unit management. Let's face it: Civilization is a war game. Conflict is a HUGE part of how you play the game. Unfortunately, the Civilization games (SMAC included) have never really managed the command and control of military units very well. When you have a large military, especially at the end of the game, it's very difficult to control. So, I was hoping that Civilization IV would have something better, perhaps like the original Harpoon's interface for combat, where you could assemble task forces, use combined arms, and move them about as independent units. Y'know, the basic type of commands and abilities that a real leader of a civilization would have, especially with modern C³I (command, control, communications, intelligence) systems. However, they kind of came up short when it came to military unit management. It's still basically the same; the vaunted “RTS-style military management” doesn't in practice work very well. Yes, you can select lots of military units at once, but they don't move in unison unless they're all one unit type. When you move a combined-arms military force, it still meanders along in a very confused fashion. Back to the drawing boards, folks. Still, I'll give them credit: The took the cursed Great Leaders from Civilization III out of the game, and replaced them with much more fun Great Persons. Yay! I really hated how I would never generate any Great Leaders but the AI opponents would come after me with dozens of armies. That small change alone really improved my gameplay experience. In general, though, the way that the military units themselves are handled is an improvement over the previous games, largely because the “guy-with-a-pointed-stick-defeats-M1Abrams-Tank” kinds of battles are now far more infrequent (though, frustratingly, they still happen).

Not MAD Enough: One thing that I'll call out for a severe taunting: the way the game handles nuclear weapons. In Civilization II, you had almost the full range of strategic deterrent options: you had tactical nuclear missiles, ICBMs, and you could store nuclear missiles on submarines, to have SSBN deterrent patrols. Nuclear weapons had devastating consequences, and could truly be destabilizing. If the AI announced they had one, the tension level rose dramatically. Rise of Nations also handles nuclear weapons well. It doesn't let you do the SSBN thing, but the utter devastation wrought by the nuclear weapons is quite realistic, and the Armageddon timer keeps things from going out of hand while still permitting tactical nuclear releases. In Civilization II, Caesar especially was prone to not only announcing his control of nuclear weapons, but actually releasing them. In one case in Civilization II, having pushed Caesar into a corner with conventional arms, he promptly and unexpectedly decimated Washington and New York. I promptly retaliated using my SSBNs, which were sitting undetected off the Roman coast—an unwanted, though realistic, nuclear exchange. I really don't like the way that nuclear weapons are handled in Civilization IV. Only one kind of nuclear weapon is allowed, and you can't put nuclear weapons on submarines. Plus, despite the hysterical response of the AI players if you actually initiate a nuclear release, they really aren't that powerful; they just do a little damage to all the units in a city, and the city itself is only marginally affected. I'm a peaceful guy, and I'm certainly not advocating the wanton use of nuclear weapons, but if you have to use them, then they should have powerful effects as well as consequences. In Civilization IV, the political effects of using nuclear weapons are overly excessive and the physical effects are far too weak.

Without Vision, the People Perish: I greatly appreciated how completely essential a healthy R & D budget is to final victory in Civilization IV. If you don't spend on basic R & D, your civilization whithers and dies. Say what you like about the current President, between the Vision for Space Exploration and the American Competitiveness Initiative he's done an excellent job of correcting a decades-long trend and increasing funding for core American engineering/physical science R & D activities—NSF funding tripled, NASA going back to the Moon and on to Mars. So, I thought that was a nice touch on the part of the game designers. I also liked how your R & D investment played into the Culture ranking. What I didn't like was that the orderly technological progression from previous games has been deleted. I can see why they did this, but in my view it doesn't work very well. Hopefully, a future mod (or expansion) will give us traditionalists the ability to turn on a Civilization I-III style tech tree.

Culture War: Paradoxically, although Culture is now a bigger part of the game, I felt that it was harder to wage Culture War on your neighbors in Civilization IV than in Civilization III—enemy cities seem to rebel to your side much more infrequently. I did like the addition of culture specific Wonders like Broadway, and how the culture rating now ties into the city happiness index.

Religions: Speaking of culture, the biggest new addition in Civilization IV is the much-ballyhooed and somewhat controversial Religion feature. I actually like the new Religion feature in the game; it really doesn't distract from the gameplay (although it can also be argued that it doesn't really add that much, either) and was tastefully done in such a way that, objectively speaking, no one really has any right to be offended, flame wars on the forums notwithstanding. I especially liked how you don't have to actively use the Religions if you don't want to, a nice touch. I've heard some suggestions that each religion should have had one unique attribute; I agree, and that could be a good thing for an expansion pack. Another good ideas that I've seen on the forums that could improve this part of the game is have some sort of “Inquistor” unit to go and sweep competing religions out of your cities. My biggest beef with the Civilization IV religion component is that, being a pragmatic type, I tend to research stuff like “Iron Working” and “Horseback Riding” before Mysticism and thus I'm almost always beaten to getting a state religion. In that scenario, the best thing is to get the Free Religion civic ASAP.

Victory: The victory conditions remain essentially unchanged from previous games, although a new “Culture Victory” has been added (if you have three cities above a certain culture rating; essentially, you have to build all the Wonders in a few spots). The emasculation of the Space Race Victory continues; it's now even more simplified than it was in even Civilization III. I heartily disagree with this design decision. The endgame race to the stars was one of the best parts about Civs I and II! Civilization I and II featured realistic on-orbit assembly of the ship in space, which could only be stopped by capturing your capital. This really ratcheted up the tension level, making for some memorable late game strategies. In Civilization IV, you just launch a rocket and you win! Gone is the marvelous endgame tension, along with any sense of astronautical engineering reality, as you decide whether you have the time to build a fully equipped starship with a maximum chance of survival or whether you have to launch a bare-bones ship to beat the competition.

Edutainment: Many of the early patches focused on fixing the Civilopedia, giving it the web-like interface and hyperlinks. As usual, you can easily spend a lot of time browsing the Civilopedia (which infuriates folks in multiplayer games, by the way....) and learning a lot about human history. However, as a student of history, I'm forced to point out that the Civilopedia in Civilization IV (unlike the previous games) is written in a far less objective, far snarkier style. Now, I don't want to sound stuck-up, and it is just a game, and we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously, but the Civilization series and the Civilopedia in particular has always been a great way to get young folks to learn about world history in a fun matter, almost despite themselves. For that reason, the informative, objective, and dispassionate Encyclopedia entries from the previous titles (and even the Datalinks entries from SMAC) were really great learning tools. To be blunt, the Civilization IV civilopedia gets it flat-out wrong in a couple of cases, most notably in the Apollo and space elevator entries. A little less snark and a bit more Britannica would have been greatly appreciated.

Government and Social Choices: The civics and government choices have been heavily revamped. I thought that the way that previous games had handled governments and social choices was just fine, and really didn't need any tweaking. In Civilization IV, instead of simply picking a government type, you now have a wide array of sociopolitical options. This is the one area where they did build on the SMAC experience: they were trying to blend the Civilization III style government selection with the SMAC social engineering tab, and for the most part it works.

Monuments: Inexplicably, the “Build-a-palace” screen has been taken out of the game. I really liked the palace feature; I was glad to see it back in Civilization III (Civilization II had a “Throne Room,” which wasn't nearly as much fun). I saw an interview with some of the designers where they essentially said “Oops” about this feature, so maybe we'll see the triumphant return of the palace builder with the expansion pack.

Multiplayer: The multiplayer component of the game has been significantly improved over Civilization III. Or, to put it another way, unlike Civilization III, Civilization IV's multiplayer game actually works. Connecting through firewalls remains problematic, but Civilization IV seems to work very well with the Hamachi program, and is significantly more stable in multiplayer mode than Civilization III.

In Part III, we'll conclude this series of articles by discussing the cool features we wanted that weren't in Civilization IV. Be sure to also read Part I of this series, as well our story about a three day multiplayer Civilization IV match, Juliraptor's discussion about how to mod and patch Civilization IV, and her impressions of the game. Photo Credit: Me!


Tags: Civilization IV

An Epic Review of Civilization IV (Part 1)

This review is so long (ironically just like a game of Civ IV) that it will be broken up into several posts. This is Part 1. You can read Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

Here follows my analysis of Civilization IV, a game which has already accrued some significant accolades, including an Editor's Choice award from Computer Gaming World, the game of the year award from GameSpot, and an 8/10 from Mr. Gnome. The reason why it took so long for me to get around to it (the game is currently about eight months old) is simply because the game was a buggy mess when initially released. I purchased the special edition of the game right off, and was immediately disappointed with the sheer quantity of bugs, the worst being a severe memory leak that slows the game to a standstill (rolling over the turns can result in five minutes of intensive CPU chugging). Of course, with the documented overheat problems with the Inspiron 8600c, intensive CPU chugging means a system restart and pointing a fan at the computer to prevent a fire. I decided to wait for the inevitable patch before doing any sort of analysis or review. As I hinted last week, the 1.52 release that was released on Christmas Eve was a significant improvement, substantially reducing the number of bugs and making so one could actually play the game. Although the annoying memory leaks still occur, they don't happen until later in the game and they're slightly less severe, so they're marginally easier to tolerate. Marginally.

So...let's talk some Civ. Let me make one thing clear: I love the Civilization series of games. I love the idea of starting with one tribe and taking a civilization to the stars. I love the freedom you have to try new strategies. I love how the notion of sending a human colony to Alpha Centauri (correctly, I might add) defines your greatness as a civilization. I love how the game gives you the feeling that you're the leader of a society, with many of the options that a real chief of state would have. I love how you can browse the Civilopedia and learn new things about the progress of history and technology. In short, Civilization is the ultimate thinking person's game, and rewards those with a sense of history and a vision for humanity's future. It's fun and replayable. The more time you put into it, the more fun it is and the more rewarding your experience is. So, if I sound critical, it's because I care. As the old saying goes, just because you love somebody doesn't mean you don't tell them about the mustard on their lip.

A Short History of Civ: There must have been something in the water back in 1991, because that year saw an explosion of incredible creativity which has never been matched: Fred Ford and Paul Reiche created the timeless Star Control II, and Chris Roberts crafted the classic Wing Commander, and Sid Meier crafted the original masterpiece, Civilization. I still love the original game; I spent hours and hours and hours playing Civilization. I still remember with great fondness my 1000 year war with the Romans and the quiet feeling of satisfaction watching your spaceship cruise into the Alpha Centauri system.

My favorite game in the terrestrial "Civilization" series remains Civilization II; I felt that Civilization II offered the most gameplay and unit choices to the player, without sacrificing the artful play balancing of the original Civilization. . However, unless you've been hiding under a rock, you probably know that there was an "Unofficial" sequel to the Civilization series in the form of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which is definitely the best PC game since the legendary Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters. It's a perfect blend of strategy, well-developed AI, play balancing, player options, and an engaging sci-fi storyline, as well as an incredibly well-thought-out extrapolation of future technologies and social trends. SMAC still occupies a secure place on my hard drive, seven years later, and if Windows Vista makes SMAC unplayable, then I'm not upgrading.

In between Alpha Centauri and Civilization III, Brian Reynolds, the lead designer of SMAC and Civilization II, left Firaxis to start his own company, Big Huge Games. Its first release, Rise of Nations, was an masterpiece of a game that seamlessly integrated Civilization-style gameplay elements with the fun of RTS-style gameplay. Its really fun and very replayable, and definitely had a better multiplayer component than Civilization III. I have a sense that Firaxis definitely missed Mr. Reynolds during the production of Civilization III and Civilization IV, especially because many features of Civilization IV seem to be reactionary responses to Rise of Nations.

The follow-up to SMAC, Civilization III was a decidedly mixed bag, despite being built on the same engine. It didn't build at all upon the incredible creative success of SMAC; it felt simply like a sloppy remake of the first game, although had the new content in the "Conquests" expansion been included in the original game it would have helped. Despite real efforts to simplify and improve the gameplay (airstrikes, empire support costs, new diplomacy options, new governments, armies, and a simplified space race) none of them worked very well, and in fact in two cases (the armies and the simplified space race) they significantly detracted from the gameplay.

Because Civilization III had been such a disappointment, I had high hopes for Civilization IV. Firaxis does a much better job than most companies of interacting with its fan base and listening to feedback, and when I saw some interviews with the new crew of developers saying that they were aware of the deficiencies in Civilization III, were using the legendary "List of Lists" (a fan-compiled list of things requested for Civilization games) as a guide and working to improve the gameplay experience as compared to Civilization III, I became intrigued and hopeful. So, let's take a look at Civilization IV.

The Packaging: I ordered the Civilization IV Special Edition, which was $10 more than the regular edition. It came packaged in an attractive leatherette case, and came with a SMAC-style tech tree poster (helpful in multiplayer games as a quick reference), a spiral-bound version of the player manual, a keyboard command card, and a copy of the soundtrack. It almost felt like I was opening an old DOS game! Well worth the added cost, in my opinion. I have a sneaky hunch, now that these “Special Edition” games are more commonplace, people are choosing the games with all of the nifty goodies over the bare bones PDF manual versions.

The Install: Unlike a lot people's experiences, I actually experienced no problems with the installation; the game correctly configured itself and has native support for the 1200 x 800 screen of my Inspiron 8600c. I was pleasantly surprised by the small-for-these-days-but-still-darn-big-especially-when-you-consider-that-CivI-was-just-2-megabytes 2 GB install footprint. The startup menu includes a handy direct link to the Firaxis autopatcher. You have an option to install the Xfire game chat client, but you can skip it if you don't like Xfire (more about Xfire in a future post)...

The Opening Credits: Unlike the previous games, which tried to show the march of humanity's progress from the Stone Age to the Space Age, the opening animation appears to show a Mediterranean military action in the classical era, circa 500 B.C. or so. It's well done, but I kind of missed the march of human progress theme. Oddly, the Rise of Nations opening animation probably would have worked better in Civilization IV and vice versa.

The Music: Civilization IV features some of the best in-game music since Star Control II, especially the zippy music by Christopher Tin that underlies the opening credits and menu. Called “Baba Yetu,” its an energetic and catchy rendition of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili. Definitely does a great job of setting the tone for the game. You can also define your own playlist (provided the music is in MP3 format) and play that in the game instead.

Picking a Civilization: When you start the game, you no longer pick a civilization; you pick the civilization's leader, who has certain attributes. It's an interesting idea, and for the most part it works. However, one of the game's major weaknesses in my view is the fact that they jettisoned the civilization-specific unit artwork of Civilization III in favor of generalized unit types; all units now look the same regardless of civilization affiliation. It takes a lot of the atmosphere out of the game.

In Part 2, we'll examine what playing the game is like. In Part 3, we'll examine some of the game's major shortcomings. Be sure to also read our story about a three day multiplayer Civilization IV match, Juliraptor's discussion about how to mod and patch Civilization IV, and her impressions of the game. Photo Credit: Firaxis Fan Site Kit.

Tags: Civilization IV

A "Quick" Multiplayer Game of Civ IV

On a Sunday in February, we began a multiplayer game of Civilization IV with BNG Possum (Roosevelt), Juliraptor (Peter the Great), a friend (Napoleon), and 3 AI players (random). We created a “Balanced” world, which is basically one continent with resources equitably distributed. We added one twist to this game by turning “Technology Trading” off. The potential benefits: the AI cannot share technologies with each other, hopefully, resulting in more “fair” gameplay. The potential pitfalls: if you get behind in the technology race, then you are stuck.


BNGPossum: I decided to play as the Americans, in the spirit of “I could do a better job of running my country then these clowns we elected.” This was our first game with the new 1.52 patch that came out on Christmas Eve, and it was in my view a significant improvement, rasing the game from "Virtually Unplayable" to "Mostly Useable". My little Inspiron still suffered severe memory leaks near the end of the game, so hopefully the next patch will solve that problem once and for all. Still, if you've held off buying the game because you've heard (correctly) that it is unplayable on anything but monstrously expensive gaming rigs, you can probably now buy the game with some degree of confidence that it will work decently up until game year 1900 or so.

Juliraptor: I approached this game with the idea that I would focus on technology first and everything else second. Technologic research can be optimized by having a good economy and devoting most of your income to research, building libraries, building wonders with technology bonuses, and by improving research rates in cities by having special citizens and Great Scientists. The Civilopedia also states that you can speed research by adopting certain civics like Free Religion and Representation.

4000 BC (Juliraptor): It's the dawn of time and Moscow is founded! The mighty Russian people entrust me, Juliraptor, with their fate (those fools!).

875 BC (Juliraptor): Barbarians overrun St. Petersburg (my second city, which I was gifted by friendly natives far from my capitol, Moscow). Hapless villagers scream in terror! I vow vengeance!

500 BC (Juliraptor): My rampaging horse archers take back St. Petersburg. Along the way, I find that the Americans have built up around my territory. My four scouts (two gifted by friendly natives) have explored almost the entire continent, encountering Isabella of the Spanish (AI) and Saladin of the Arab nation (AI).

200 BC (Juliraptor): The Americans continue to annoy me by building in the territory that I had staked out for mighty Russia (didn’t they see the signs?). I am almost completely blocked in now. I am building along the coast, and because my cities are not in a block but are strung out into a boomerang shape, I am drowning in maintenance expenses. I declare Judaism my state religion to get some happy smiling faces. I discovered this religion a few years back, but now it has spread sufficiently across the land and even into foreign lands.

75 BC (Juliraptor): I liberate Samartian from the barbarians. This city is located next to a stockpile of furs that will someday make a lot of Russians very happy. Also this year, I was declared a “heathen” by the Spanish because of my state religion, but I take no notice, and start building an army of horse archers at the border closest to Spain, in preparation for the “great cleansing”.

175 AD (Juliraptor): I found my second religion, Christianity. So far, everyone is getting along fine.

960 AD (Juliraptor): I finally convert to Hereditary Rule to get +1 smiling faces.

1350 AD (Juliraptor): I finally build my second wonder, the Hagia Sofia! Unfortunately, my hefty maintenance costs are causing my economy to struggle. So far, research has proceeded at >60%, but I have not been able to compete culturally. Someone keeps building all the wonders before me!! But I put on a brave face as I begin research on Gunpowder. I’ll take that culture by force if I have to!

1480 AD (Juliraptor): My economy is picking up slightly, but because of my poor culture, I have fallen firmly into 3^rd place.

1580 AD (Juliraptor): I start research on Military Tradition to get my special unit the Cossack!

1585 AD (Juliraptor): My first Musketman shows a roaming barbarian what it’s like to be a smoldering crater! Now that I’ve got a military advantage, I start focusing on culture and civics.

1640 AD (Juliraptor): A golden age enlightens the Russian people! And I decide to finally give my servants paper so they can write all of my witty thoughts down for posterity.

1660 AD (Juliraptor): Let them have newspapers (Printing Press) with their morning gruel! I also build my first ship this year. It won’t be much use in a single-continent game, but ships can be used to bombard coastal cities. Also, the first person to circumnavigate the global gets a naval movement bonus (and the fame!).

1700 AD (Juliraptor): The glorious ruler of Russian finally decides to edgicate his people (by researching Education).

1725 AD (Juliraptor): My first Cossack obliterates a barbarian warrior!

1750 AD (Juliraptor): My economy is finally improving. How did I do it? Well, as the great, all-knowing, all-powerful ruler of Mother Russia, I’ll tell you… I built several banks in my larger cities, I built courthouses in outlying cities to reduce maintenance costs, I researched some technologies which give bonuses (such as double $ from villages), and I switched to Free Market (which gives +1 trade) and Free Speech (which gives +2 gold from towns).

1780 AD (Juliraptor): The Americans convert to Emancipation, and now my people want their freedom! This is causing much unhappiness, and I begin researching Democracy.

1800 AD (Juliraptor): After a brief revolution, my people are free! (I finish researching Democracy, which gives the option to adopt Emancipation).

1812 AD (Juliraptor): I finally circumnavigated the globe – oh, the glory!! A text message announces the news to the globe and the accolades come pouring in!

1828 AD (Juliraptor): I discovered a barbarian city in the tundra wastelands to the south of my borders. Cimmerian is quickly liberated by Russian cossacks. St. Paul my first prophet is finally born this year. And he is sent to build his Temple of Solomon in St. Petersburg, the home of Judaism. I will get a monetary benefit for all city with Judaism.

1834 AD (Juliraptor): I discovered that the French have been quietly expanding near my territory and into the center of the continent. My unfortunate position means that I have a much smaller nation that the other two human players, and explains why my score has dropped to third place.

1858 AD (Juliraptor): I build my first infantry, a powerful unit. With the research of Assembly Line I can now upgrade my musketmen at a cost of 205 gold. But I don't sweat it because I'm making 100 gold/turn -- an amount that is growing rapidly as I build Marketplaces, Courthouses, and Banks. The French declare war on the Arab nation.

1866 AD (Juliraptor): I found Tver' in the last remaining unclaimed wilderness. I switch to the civic State Property to balance the maintenance costs of having a stretched out nation, and my available gold/turn increases by 30/turn.

1912 AD (Juliraptor): My people finally get electricity -- let them have their coffee makers and televisions!

1921 AD (Juliraptor): The French have decimated the Arabs, and I quickly grab the last Arab city for my own.

1950 AD (Juliraptor): The French want a defensive pact, so we can jointly take down the Americans who are quickly working towards a Space Race Victory. There are only 100 turns left! The French plan is to cut of American access to the coast. My plan is to pillage some farms, which actually turns out to help my score a bit -- I get some income and the GNP of the Americans decreases putting me in first for GNP. I know that I can't compete against the raging American army (with its specialized Navy Seal units that I see inside cities lining my borders), and my nation is too strung out to easily defend. I have a border longer than the US/Canada border and I feel as well prepared for a war with the US and Mexico.

1976 AD (Juliraptor): The Americans declare war on us, and attack the French. And I start pillaging and terrorizing cattle.

1982 AD (Juliraptor): The French and I trade a city, so that the French can airlift troops in behind my borders -- hopefully in a surprise attack, but even this ploy does not keep the Americans from winning the Space Race Victory. In a few years, I eventually lose. What went wrong? Well, I was in a weak position on the map, I didn't have enough territory, or a defensible border, and I had no oil until I researched Plastics (in order to build offshore platforms) which was way later than either the Americans or French, and thus my military was considerably weaker. I did OK in the technology race, and wasn't that far behind the Americans (BNG Possum), but I was cut out of the Wonder-building race early on as my cities didn't produce as quickly as both the Americans and French. If you want to know how to actually win, then I suggest reading BNG Possum's tips below for successfully dominating everything in Civ IV... although rumor has it, he got lucky (the really dumb kind of lucky).

BNGPossum: Unfortunately, I can't do a proper play-by-play because I didn't have the patience to take notes when we were playing. Juliraptor has already revealed the ending, so I'll just offer some “strategery” thoughts.I did a number of things differently for this game than the way I usually play. Where's the fun in doing things over and over again? (Answer: There isn't any!) Although I generally favor wiping out opponents early and often I decided that since the American special unit and preferred civics don't pop up until late in the game, this seemed like a good game to go for a longer-term approach—aiming, appropriately enough, for a Space Race victory. There are are two reasons why I won, one big and one minor:

The main reason why I prevailed is simply because I did get lucky (really lucky, hopefully not the dumb kind). I'm a firm believer in the concept of "Fortune Favors the Bold". So, instead of keeping my two starting warriors closer to home for defense, I recklessly sent both out exploring. It paid off, big time. Warrior 1 found another settler unit in a goodie hut, and Warrior 2 found a scout unit in a goodie hut, who promptly found another settler unit and another worker unit. [Yet more proof that it always pays to see what's over the next hill....take that, opponents of human space exploration!!!] This gave me a huge early advantage. A good rule of thumb is that every city should produce two more cities and support two worker units, one for regional improvements and one for local improvements. That generally takes a while, at least until the beginning of the first millenium. Because of bold exploration helped by sheer dumb luck, my civilization had already reached this level by 2000 B. C., about a whole 2000 years ahead of time. The rest of the crowd never caught up.

The minor reason that I won is that I kept a bunch of obsolete units near the French border, which because of my relentless cultural expansion meant that I had a bunch of guys with pointy sticks watching my tank-wielding opponent. Useless, but they kept an eye on the French border cities. Sure enough, when my space ship components started to be launched, my guys with pointy sticks noticed a massive French military build up near the border. Napoleon was surging his units in order to stage a last ditch attack to beat me before I launched the Constitution to Alpha Centauri. The best defense is a good offense, so when I noticed the massive military buildup I stole a page from the NATO playbook and immediately salvoed my entire nuclear arsenal at the border cities. This gave me tactical surprise and control of the battlefield, and caused a lot of curse words over the chat line. Napoleon's heavily damaged calvary and tank units were easy prey for my gunships, stealth bombers, and (especially) my heretofore secret modern armor. Those modern tanks sure do pack a wallop. Twenty turns and eight lost cities later, the French sued for peace to stop the onslaught, but it was too late. The Consititution was on its merry way, and secular democracy would now be forever safe from plagues, asteroids, and marauding French and Russian-types. At least, until the colonists get eaten by Centauri mindworms...

Posted by Juliraptor and BNG Possum.

Getting More Out Of Civ IV

The great thing about the internet is the ability to upgrade, fix, and modify those expensive games you bought!

Official Sites:
Firaxis Civ IV: get the patch (v. 1.52) and you can download a fankit that contains Civ IV images and more. The 1.52 patch is supposed to improve gameplay on lower-end computers, but be sure to read the details. The previous patch on 11/25/2005 fixed numerous gameplay problems. If you didn't get a patch yet, you haven't really played this game!

2K Civ IV (flash required, to download the new flash and install it will require you to close your browser)

Other Links:
Overview of Civ IV on Wikipedia
CivFanatics.com has tons of articles, references, mods, maps, etc!

Modifications on CivFanatics:
Many great mods for Civ IV can be found on the CivFanatics site (link to the archive). I tried several mods prior to the 1.52 patch, but since then I’ve only tried MPME, the Multiplayer Movie Enabler, which makes multiplayer games as interesting as the single-player. This is a great mod! In general, I’m most interested in mods that don’t make radical changes to the game play. Most of all, I’d like to see a new tech tree – one that actually makes sense and has a number of new techs added in. Some fans have created major modifications that sound interesting should they ever be completed. For example, one group is working on a Star Wars mod that will set the game in the Star Wars universe. Another group is creating a Moon Colonization mod that sets the game on the Moon. And another group is creating a fantasy-themed mod (Fall from Heaven).

I just downloaded a few mods from the CivFanatics archives and will be trying them out soon. Of special interest are: the Real UN Resolutions mod, which changes the UN resolutions in game to match actual UN resolutions, and the Actual Quotes for Diplomatic Leaders mod (v. 1.21), which promises to change the diplomacy text for each leader to match what their real-life counterpart might say. Both of these are simply added to the game by installing the files to the \CustomAssest\XML\text\ folder. Other mods that have great potential to make the game more dynamic and variable will make changes to the Leader Traits (such as Seafaring = +1 Naval Movement bonus), or give you other special abilities depending on your civ’s starting locale, units, buildings, or other choices. The endless combination of special abilities and units in Rise of Nations is what I think makes that game so great. If something similar can be achieved for Civ IV, I’d never stop playing it! I’d also like to see a dynamic map, such as new landforms generated randomly, natural disasters, etc. Rumors of an Alpha Centauri mod make me hope that they will keep the random natural events and the ability to terraform up and down. Lastly, I am also looking forward to the addition of more playable civs to Civ IV, especially the ones that were removed since Civ III: Babylonians, Assyrians, Inca, Mayans, etc.