Sid Meier has been in the videogames industry for 24 years. He began his long and illustrious career as a founding member of MicroProse Software with Bill Stealey in 1982. In 1991 he produced one of the best selling and critically regarded games ever, and is credited with creating an entire genre (the ‘God Game’) with: Civilization. It was a highly addictive game that even created its own phenomenon, entitled ‘just one more turn’. “There was never really a good place to stop playing,” says Meier in an interview at Gamasutra. “I’ve often found myself playing and then realized I’m late for a meeting. So I’ve been exposed to the phenomenon myself.”

Seventeen years later (and 43 games that Meier has been significantly involved in) and the series’ are still going. This brings us to the latest offering from Firaxis; Sid Meier’s Civilization: Revolution. This version is the first in the series to be specifically designed for home consoles, and is currently available for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, with a Nintendo DS release scheduled for 27th of June. The game features 16 civilizations to choose from, each with their particular advantages. There are four ways to win: economic, diplomatic, military methods or via researching technology and being the first to reach Alpha Centauri.

The graphics are cartoon-esque, rather than realistic, yet suit the game surprisingly well. The leaders and advisors are presented in great detail, and the cities themselves look fantastic. As you progress through time, they take on different styles related to the current age (ancient, medieval, industrial and modern) as do the units. For example, your trade caravans progress from camels to vans, your ships develop from wood to metal, and so on.

In order to streamline the experience for console owners, the games length is cut down considerably. Campaigns only take between three and six hours, regardless of by which means you are attempting to win. The emphasis has been placed on repeated plays using the various different civilizations, and to try different approaches so that the player can fully appreciate what the game has to offer. No more all-nighters with a can of Red Bull as you stare bleary-eyed at a monitor, just to try and finish the game once, then.

Another step taken by the team to restructure the experience is the cutting down of the game areas. There is only one map and no option to change its size. Instead, water and land mass is randomly generated in an attempt to keep each play through fresh, rather than a memory exercise in finding all the best resources. You also only have four other civilizations on the map during a game, randomly picked from who is left after you’ve made your choice. Due to this, problems can arise due to cities being in close proximity to each other. If you are nearby to someone who is doing well, they will repeatedly try to attack you as you are encroaching on their space, or they will be stealing valuable resource squares from you.

Your advisors talk in ‘Sim Speak’, making little noises resembling speech, which can grate. They also pop up every five minutes which can get tiresome, especially if you’ve played several games and know what’s going on. This is particularly annoying when you are able to reach some goals, such as economic victory, but are aiming for another type of win, as they pop up every turn to tell you all you need to do is build a certain wonder to win.

Another issue I found is that the game seems to be focused heavily on combat, even with the other choices of victory. Other civilizations regularly decide they want to try and kill you, just because you’ve researched something before they have. It seems that everyone living in harmony is out of the question, which is a shame. Understandably Firaxis wanted to keep the gameplay spicy, but it can be very frustrating. For example, when playing on the higher difficulties, it can be strenuous trying to achieve a non-violent victory. The other Leaders threaten you around every five turns, and if you don’t meet their demands for money or technology, they will send their troops your way. This gets annoying, as you have to make sure you keep your roster of troops stacked up to defend your city or cities just in case someone decides your getting too big for your boots. They also seem to manage to have a cornucopia of armies at their disposal, as well as managing to build several wonders and buildings, much more than it would be possible for you to achieve. It is fairly straight forward to keep your city protected, as long as you keep a couple of armies of the best defenders.

However, sometimes you would like to build wonders and buildings, rather than a collection of troops. The only way you will be left alone is if you start in a quiet corner of the map that is difficult for the other people to reach. There is no room for peace it appears, unless you are willing to pay for it.Due to this, some Civilizations are easier to win with than others. The Germans have strong military units, and get a few valuable special units. This means they can more easily defend and attack then say, the Indians (that is people from India, not Native Americans), who are more based on culture. This is obviously to reflect the societies in real life, and their various strengths and weaknesses, but coupled with the combat issue mentioned above, it can lead to quite biased game play. Although in the single player this can just represent an additional challenge for players looking for one, it could lead to issues with the game’s online multiplayer. One can image that many people online are going to try and obliterate the other players off the map, rather than enter a science race with them.

These gripes really are quite minor. The game has many little touches in it that make it a joy to play, and in the current market, little touches go a long way. There are numerous moments that bring a smile to your face as you progress. The way your troops change appearance as they are upgraded through victories, and their name changes to reflect the skills you have chosen for them. It’s fun to see a Ninja Stealth Tank rolling up to a city. You also develop a strange affinity for your units. Having an Army of Warriors (which you can make when you have 3 units of the same type) at the start and watching them grow and develop into a veritable force remarkably evokes a sense of pride, you don’t want to lose them. Not because they are valuable units, but because they have been by your side for a few thousand years. Due to the smaller size of the map, these individual units make a big difference and it really pays off to let them all gain experience, rather than having one über -unit.

Overall, Firaxis has very succesfully managed to achieve the key goal it set: make Civilization work for the console market. The team has put together a totally new Civilization experience that works very well on the home machines and provides a rewarding and satisfying game in a genre which definitely needed something added to it. Although it may annoy some Civ purists that the game has been somewhat watered down, it suits the target audience perfectly. It is highly addictive (I played until 3 a.m. the first night I had it) and unquestionably has that ‘just one more turn’ factor. If you want something a little different in order to break up the shooting and racing on your console of choice, you can’t do much better than this. Now, I’m off to rule the world.

MattyJ

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