Civilization 4

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…. STAR WARS. But that has nothing to do with my story right now. Not too long ago (around Christmas) my mom decided to buy me a laptop. Now it wasn’t long before I wondered if the thing could play games. One of the sites I went to was Canyourunit.com. I shot in the dark for games that would come up positive as playable. By some stroke of happenstance I tried Civilization 4. By my surprise and glee, not only could I run it, but I could run it higher then the recommended settings. I read and watched quite a bit of reviews on the game and eventually I decided that I wanted to buy the game.

I went to GameStop to ask them if they had Civilization. They referred me to another store (circuit city I believe). Finally got the game and when I got home I opened it up. Let me just say this box was chock full of shit. I would have taken pictures, but I don’t have access to a camera at the moment. There are 2 posters in the box to start. One is a giant picture of various nationalities fighting with weapons from a bow, to a tank, in front of national landmarks. This poster is pretty awesome looking; however I don’t think I’ve opened it up till now. The next poster is a giant cheat-sheet. The first side has a HUGE picture of the tech tree, and descriptions of Techs, terrain, Icons, and what they do. The second side has; the resources, Civics, and another chart this time with unit upgrade tree.
The next thing in the box was a manual. This isn’t one of those tiny instruction manuals like you’ll find in console games, this thing huge. The manual is 144 pages in one language. Most huge manuals you see are in three languages, but not civilization it didn’t have room. Not only is it 144 pages, but it’s the abridged version. The full version is on the disk. That is a bit crazy.

Even when you move on to the disks, there’s a lot there. There are four disks, 1 for play, 2 for installation only, and the final one is a behind the scenes DVD. I’ve seen the videos on it, Ok DVD. It’s not the best DVD, but it’s interesting. There is a 30 minute video about Sid Meier’s, and his carrier by g4. There was a really interesting 1 hour 20 minute making of game. It really showed how much work went into the game. More game developers need to do some sort of “making of” like valve has. It shows the game in multiple stages of development. It makes you appreciate the game a lot more. Next was a small animated video. It was nothing fancy, but it was interesting. It was of the railroads of the game. Next was what I’d like to call a 4 minute ad for the Warlord expansion (which came in the gold edition I got). Next was the intro movie for warlords, Again, nothing special. Finally is the funniest part of the DVD. It has fake telecommunications between GW bush(or a good imitator) and other world leaders. One of the calls he’s talking about the horrible WMD’s genghis khan has called the trebuchet.

There is the final video if you’re interested. It’s pretty funny, and rounds out the DVD. But those are just the extras, Pretty cool extras if you ask me, but they mean nothing if the game isn’t good.

What is Civilization 4 you may be asking? Well if you put fire emblem, sim cities, and Risk, and put it in a blender, you’d get a crushed up piece of junk. But if you combined the concepts, you might get something that looks a bit like civilization. The goal is to conquer the world one way, or another. It has a deep and interesting development tree. You can have an epic game from the stone age to modern times. But for the most part, it plays like a board game. Sure there are special scenarios, but it has a board game feel. You can play with tons of players, and it’s pretty awesome.

What could I possibly have that I don’t like about this marvelous gem of a game. My first problem is the length of a game. A single game can Easily take longer than an hour in length. Even when I set the settings to quick game, it feels more schizophrenic then quick. By the moment you’ve built 12 archers, they have an army of redcoats. The matches get too long, and that wouldn’t be so much of a problem, if it weren’t for my second problem. I have trouble winning. I sometimes have the top of the heap, but I quickly get down to last in no-time. Normally Id just set the difficulty down, but I’m on the LOWEST difficulty. I’ll try it again a bit more, but that isn’t the issue. Here is how a match goes. I start the match and if I don’t get overwhelmed by the size of the map or the size of the opponent, I’ll start. Then I get a good start. I get higher and higher in the tech chain, till I’ve swamped the opponent in advanced-ness. Then about ¾ through, the enemy catches up, and then surpasses me to the point where there is almost no point in continuing. I open the world builder and give myself the best stuff, but then quickly get board. That really isn’t the right way to play civilization. Maybe I’m just not getting the thread of logic that most people understand. Maybe I’m not expanding fast enough, maybe I’m building to close together. I don’t know, what I do know, is that I suck at Civ 4.

Well if I hate it so much, why do I want to like it more? There are 2 things I really like in games, upgrading, and good gui’s (graphic user interfaces for you noobs out there). The interface for Civ 4 is amazing. Not only is all the information there, but it shows it in a clean and visually pleasant manner. That, and its shiny. I like shiny. The upgrade systems are rewording and fun. You have these developed upgrades, with cool looking thumbnails, and they do some cool stuff. For example music not only allows you to make Notre Dame, but also the first to discover it gets a great artist. All this complexity makes the game fun to play around with and see what things do. Not only that, but there is an entire encyclopedia with pictures and stuff to help you playing the game.

Civilization 4 is an amazing game, that I haven’t been into well. I really want to like it, but it hasn’t been gentle to me. I’d definitely recommend it to the “hard core” civ fans, but I’d recommend that others play more than 1 match in the demo. I don’t regret however buying civ 4. It was an experiment and it didn’t go to well. But that’s how the game world goes. You listen/don’t listen to the critics, you can be surprised, or disappointed. All I know is that civilization 4 probably isn’t the best game for me.