Monday 14 January, 2008

SUMMARY:
Civ 4 is a very fun game, that allows almost any player to come along and play it. The only downsides to the playstyle are that the technology upgrades can be slightly confusing, and that a game can take 2 or 3 hours to complete. For me, this does not present a problem but for some users it may seem to long for casual play.

GAMEPLAY:
Although I have played many RTS games before, Civilizations IV was the first game of the civ series that I have touched. As soon as I booted up the game, I was dissapointed that I had not tried it sooner. The depth of the game surprised me; where ordinary RTS games like Warcraft and Command and Conquer make you fight, Civ 4 allows you to choose how you raise your civilization from gatherer societies to the modern era. First off, you choose a nation and a leader. This choice affects you from the beginning by giving you personality type for your nation and two research abilities which start off your strategy. You don't even need to fight to win the game; the strategy I choose was to follow the peaceful path and I picked the Indian leader Gandhi to build my empire. Unfortunately, the first game I played froze after ten minutes, so I had to restart.

However, in the first ten minutes I had only gone through three turns because the amount of choices i was given. The upgrades for your people range from religions to mining to improved weaponry. The next time through I had developed a more focused plan, which was to rule the world through peacefully spreading all forms of religion. My replay went by much quicker, with turns taking a significantly shorter time.

From what I saw in the first hour, the computer characters seemed bland, without much difference in tactics. However, it could just be the fact that I was early in the game and did not get to see much development in other societies. It does seem that with the level of detail of the advancement of the civilizations that the characters should, and hopefully will, become detailed individuals. It would surprise me if they did not, because through the game I felt my cities evolve and become more intelligent and expansive. All in all, I found the beginning gameplay to be a fun experience, and hopefully will continue to be as I discover more about the later stages of the game.

I'm surprised that you're calling Civ4 an RTS. Have things changed that much since CivIII (turn-based if I recall).

Well, its not an RTS per say, but its the closest category I could think of. It's turned based, but still has most of the elements you see in games like Warcraft. But then again that's just my opinion; I've never been much for the whole micro thing. Maybe it would be better to call it a strategy game.

definately not "real-time" though, haha