The Civilization series games place you in the role of the ruler of a (hopefully) great nation. Starting with a meager band of settlers and a couple warriors with spears, you get the chance to build great cities, a mighty army, and a superior civilization. Along the way, you will develop technologies, practice diplomacy, and discover religion. To win the game, you must overcome your enemies with cultural or territorial domination, crush them on the battlefield, or win the space race to Alpha Centauri, all before 2050 AD. Beginning with the release of the first version of Civ back in 1991, this turn-based strategy game has proved to be extremely popular, even as it has become increasingly complex. Aspyr advertises that certain features of Civ IV were designed to streamline gameplay and speed up the action, but be careful, Civ lovers – despite their claims to the contrary, some of the new interfaces and commands may prove to be confusing. Even expert Civ players may need a little extra time to figure things out the first time they sit down. There also are several news ways to automate things like production and combat, but relying on these tools too heavily may make you feel as though the game is simply playing itself with you along just to watch.
The basic version of Civ IV includes more technologies, religions, unit types, city improvements, government types – now called Civics, and bonus events, such as Great People and World Wonders than previous versions of the game. Each civilization also gets boosts in certain areas based on its ruler, of which there is also an expanded number, two in most civilizations. (One pet peeve here is that rulers are set historical figures, so you can’t change the gender of your great leader, only his or her name.) The Warlords expansion pack adds even more choices to extend game play, including eight new game scenarios, six new Civilizations, the Warlord unit type, and a variety of other new units, buildings, resources, Wonders, Leaders, Great People, etc. Civ IV also supports mods, player designed worlds and scenarios, and multiplayer games. The result of all this extra stuff is that civilizations are more customizable and unique than ever before and interactions between civs can be more complex and satisfying.
Some of the best aspects of Civ IV are the audio visual elements. The music is award-winning and the original theme songs are definitely iPod-worthy. The redesigned 3-D graphics are also gorgeous, especially if you have the hardware support for all the additional textures and details. An issue that caused many complaints at the time of release of the original port back in 2006 was the steep hardware requirements needed to run the game smoothly. Three years later, this is not as much of a concern, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to play on a machine that just barely meets the minimum specs.
Overall, the Civ IV Gold Edition is a wonderful, highly addictive game, just like it’s predecessors, and a worthy addition to the franchise. The $50 price point is a little high for 3 year old software, though, even with the expansion pack included. I’d like to see it drop to $30, the cost of its Windows counterpart, but I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon. Aspyr’s other reason for not porting Beyond the Sword was the unexpectedly low sales of the Warlords expansion, which is still retailing for $30 by itself, so I would guess that they are still trying to recoup their development costs. I’m disappointed that they won’t be continuing work on this title, but there is plenty of good stuff in the Gold Edition to keep you occupied for many, many days!
