Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution

"A much more streamlined version of Civ, but it works well."

I've never been a big fan of strategy games, but there are a few strategy games I do like, namely, the Warcraft and Civilization games. Although Im not a massive fan of Civ, Civ Rev definitely interested me, and so I was able to borrow a copy off my friend. Whilst I think Real Time Strategy games only ideally work on PC, a turn based strategy game, like Civ Rev, works perfectly on a console. It's not as deep or complex as a PC Civ, but it's almost as good.

Civ Rev sees you choosing one out of 16 civilizations in a game of conquest. You can choose a difficulty (ranging from tutorial style, to so hard the AI actually cheat) and then you're given a random map (unfortunately you can't make your own, nor can you choose what type it is). Maps usually have a good balance of Barbarians, Land, Water, and resources though, you'll only get a few annoying maps on occasion (specifically, a map where you're stuck alone on an island). The match only contains 5 players, including yourself, where players are given no objective. There are four ways to win: Domination, where you must take all of the enemy capitals, Technology Win, where you must send a space ship to Alpha Centauri, Economic Win, where you must gain 20,000 Gold and build the "World Bank" wonder, and a Cultural Win, where you must obtain or build 15 great persons or wonders, then build the associated wonder (sorry, I really can't remember what it's called at the moment). The different win types are fairly easy to get, they just take time, and they're fairly straight forward. They're clearly presented, and you're never stuck on how to do what. The game also includes a variety of scenarios which are basically normal games which give you various different rules. One for example, entitled "Lightning Round", essentially speeds up the game by lowering the win requirements and pretty much reducing everything. Probably the best scenario however, is "Beta Centauri", which starts you with every single technology discovered. The game, as mentioned earlier, offers a good variety of difficulties. The lowest difficulty offers an optional tutorial, and really eases the player in, where as on the harder difficulties, the AI cheats, giving more of an (sometimes unfair) challenge to the player. Anyone can get into Civ Rev, and like any other Civ game, it's highly addictive...

Gameplay remains pretty much the same, so if you've played a Civ game before, you know exactly what to expect. The controls are basic yet solid, they do everything you need to and you can control everything perfectly. Since the game is turn-based, this gives Civ Rev, as a strategy game, a massive advantage over other strategy games on consoles, since it just works. RTS games have a tendency to be too hard to control with the pad, but Civ Rev controls and works fine. The game has definitely been streamlined however. Overall it's not as big as PC Civ games, there aren't any mods for you (obviously), and there are less players in a match (if I remember correctly, Civ IV offered up to 16 players in just one match). However every basic function is here, there are 16 Civs to choose from, loads of technologies and units, and of course, the Civilopedia, which offers information on absolutely everything. When playing Civ Rev you will always follow a simple guide line when you're starting, but every match feels, and essentially is, different.

When you start, you're simply given a settler, and most of the time, the spot where he is standing is a good place to found your capital. Once that's been done, you'll probably make build some defensive units. When you enter the city screen, you can change production (split into Units, Buildings and Wonders), change what resources your workers are collecting (stuff like food, production, science etc), and see what buildings you've already got. Fortunately people won't rebel or anything like that (anarchy only happens for one turn when you change government) so again, it's fairly straight forward. There are plenty of barbarians around for you to make your unit stronger. If you combine three of the same units together you can make an army. With this, you're much stronger, and the more wins you gain, the more special abilities you gain. Combat is, for the most part, luck. Each unit will have a base value for both attack and defence. When two units combat, an invisible dice rolls to determine the outcome. However, the dice will bias toward who ever has the higher stat. For example, when a unit actually attacks another unit, their stat used is their "attack", whilst the other unit relies on their "defence" to win. Who ever has the highest stat gains the advantage. However, with the lower stat you can still win, since as mentioned, it's mostly random. However, if you have 100 attack against 1 defence, the dice will be incredibly biased towards you, and there's pretty much no chance of the defendant winning. Armies will pretty much triple your stats, and many units, such as Artillery, have massive attack but incredibly low defence. This does mean that units such as Riflemen can take down enemy planes if their defence is high enough. It's stupid, and it can be incredibly frustrating at times when you have over double their stat and keep losing, but in the end, it's fair. Quite often, winning is simply wittling down their army. OK, so we know an army consists of 3 units right? Well, when fighting, their casualties can be split into the three units. For example, if a unit consists of three soldiers, when you fight an army (which will contain nine soldiers), if you kill three soldiers, the next time you fight them, there will only be six soldiers, and their stats will be lowered. This essentially means provided you keep on fighting, you can take down almost any army (on Deity difficulty, the hardest, Modern Infantry defending cities can have as much as 130 defence compared to the 80 or so attack a Wing of Bombers has, but again, keep at it and they fall soon). However you can, for the cost of a turn, heal your army which essentially brings back a full unit (you can't do this in enemy territory, unless you have the special ability). A large part of the game is combat. Even if you're going after victories other than Domination, taking other a few enemies can help, and quite a lot of the time they'll even come after you, simply meaning you must defend yourself. Other Civs will offer peace (or beg for peace, if you keep defeating their units they may stop eventually), and you can even pay Civs gold to start war with other countries you're against. However I did notice that, for the most part, Civs mostly gang up on you (other Civs rarely seem to fight, even on Deity they rarely fight each other).

Other gameplay elements are the Great Artifacts and Great People. Your city will produce a certain amount of culture every turn, and once enough is gained, a Great Person appears. There are 46 in total and they range from Great Scientists to Great Builders. They all help in their own way. You can either settle them into a city where they usually add 50% to a resource, such as science or production (you can only settle one type of Great Person into a city though, so you're only allowed one Scientist, but you can still settle other types in the same city). You can also use them straight away, to do things like covert a city to your civ, complete the production of a building (by far the best, easiest and fastest way to build wonders), or complete the research of a technology. Great People, as far as I am aware, are new to Civ Rev, and they're a great feature. Great people gained are random, and they're always a massive help when you gain them. Another, although slightly minor feature, are great artifacts. In every match there are around five or so different artifacts hidden among the game world. These range from giving you great people, giving you technologies, to simply giving you a horseman unit (the worst, the best is probably Atlantis, the tech one). They're minor but they can always help give you the edge in a game, especially on Deity. The game does feature online multiplayer, however, in fear of getting owned, and because I was happy with the single player, I didn't try it out.

The graphics in the game are fine. They're essentially the same as Civ IV, with small cities and massive units, the graphics don't look very different. The game does introduce rag doll physics however, probably only for the improved combat however. Unfortunately, whilst playing the game, and whilst connected to Xbox Live, I did get a lot of frame rate issues. I have seen other games does this as well, but when you play a game when disconnected from XBL, they mostly run fine, and this was the case with Civ Rev. However when I played connected to XBL, the game did stutter and freeze a lot, and as I said, I've seen this happen with a few other games. Sometimes it can make the game a pain to play, but sometimes it's not too bad. Maybe it's the speed of my connection (considering my sister is always on World of Warcraft), but it's still annoying, especially since many other games run fine and unaffected from XBL.

Civ Rev shows us that a strategy game on consoles can work, provided it isn't real time. The controls work fine, and although the game is definitely stream lined, the shorter yet still addictive game play will suit the more casual gamer. Any Civ fan will certainly enjoy the game, and although it's not as good as the PC games, it's still a well made strategy game for anyone that wants strategy action on a console.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/08

Game Release: Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (EU, 06/13/08)