Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution

"Less is more... a LOT more."

We have all played, seen, or heard about the Civilization series. One of the first of its kind, it was an amazing simulation of nation building starting from the pre-bronze age all the way to post-modern civilization. But each version for the consoles have usually been slow and inferior versions of the originals. Well this game sees to try and fix that with the idea of being designed from top to bottom for the consoles rather then simply acting as a port. But does it pull it off?

Civilization Revolution is the latest full Civilization game to hit the shelves and the first one to be designed exclusively for home consoles. As mentioned earlier, each home console version has been an attempt to make a port of an existing game, such as Civ1 for the Super Nintendo, and Civ2 for the Playsation. This game carries over many innovations in the game series, taking a bit from each of the civilization games.

The first thing you probably notice is that the game goes for a more cartoony design. All of the units sport big large oversized pieces of armor, big ridiculous weapons, and moves about in a very overactive way. You might also notice that all the cities and units have a particular appearance to them that is unique to each one. Aztec units have feathers and pelts while Japanese units use katanas, leaving all the nations to have a very stylized look to them, adding to their appeal. The buildings all look like they are ripped from cartoons, and the civilization leaders all look like fun caricatures of themselves. The leaders also don't speak real words but instead spout a gibberish that reminds me of the ‘sim-speak' from the ‘Sims' games EA develops. Even your advisers speak in this entertaining way, adopting the attire of the age your in much like in Civ3.

As with all the games, the object is to move from the pre-bronze age to the pos-modern age. You win via 4 different ways. You can capture the capitals of each of your enemy nations (rather then forcing you to capture all the cities of all the enemies like other games), the classic way of advancing through science and developing space travel and building a ship to travel to Alpha Centauri, producing so much culture that you produce 20 great people, Wonders, or capture 20 cities (or a combination of the two) and producing the UN building, or producing 20,000 gold and producing the world bank. If you fail at one method you can try shifting to another. Of course, if you take to long, the game will automatically end after a certain amount of time and award the win to the person furthest ahead. Your cities are your main hubs and will be the focus of the game. They produce resources depending on the surrounding environment. Grassy areas and unmodified land produce food which makes cities grow, trees and hills and such produce building resources which allow you to produce military units and buildings, and water and desert produce trade which can be used to produce money or research depending on your preference. You can decide between military units, which can attack and defend, or buildings, which affect your cities. You also have the option of building wonders which have a large affect that can only be built once and sometimes wear off when a particular piece of research is learned.

What sets this game apart from other Civilization games are a few new or simplified parts. The religion and advanced government system is removed and replaced with the simpler system that harkens back to the original government system, having you choose between despotism, communism, monarchy, republic, fundamentalism, and democracy. Despotism is where everyone starts, Monarchy and Republic offer slim benefits, with the other 3 offering larger benefits at steeper costs. Units also have no maintenance fees, and nether do buildings. This allows you to build up limitless armies and put every type of building in a city, your limit being the time it takes to produce these objects. This makes the game a lot fairer when in other Civ games you might notice you go bankrupt when trying to field an army or make more then the bare minimum of buildings and the computer seems to be able to make endless armies and still be able to buy everything they want.

Each civilization also has their own special units, as before, which offer some benefits such as more movement or attack or what not. But now nations also have special abilities that unlock as you play. Some start with special skills, such as the Arabs starting with knowledge of religion or America starting with a great person, but they also get benefits as they go along. For example, America starts with a 2% interest rate bonus to their total gold every turn, then earn a reduced cost for rushing units when they hit the medieval age, the ability to get an extra food resource from plains when they reach the industrial age, and finally getting triple production from their factories when they reach the modern age. This means that each nation really plays differently from each other and caters to different play styles, rather then simply offering a particular type of unit.

Units also have two military stats rather then one. In other games, you have units that have a general strength. In this one, you have attack and defense. It makes a bit more sense, defensive units such as archers and pikemen being best suited for defense and catapults and cannons being entirely offense. This also leads to more strategy as you might want to send units high in defense to cover units high in attack when they lay siege to enemy cities, so they don't get wiped out in a counter attack. There are no worker units in this game either, as buildings effect the efficiency of your resource gathering rather then having you build roads and farms with workers. Road building is done by simply pumping money into a single road from one city to the other, which means you will have to use more movement points getting around unless you are going from one city to another and nowhere else. Also cities can produce only gold or science, not both. You can decide with each city what you want them to produce, so you can have gold producing cities and money cities.

Some new features include the army system. To take advantage of a large number of units, you can now combine 3 units of the same type to form one army unit. So rather then having one knight being able to take out a single archer unit, you can hold the knight off by combining 3 archers into one archer army, which combines the health and total defense and offense strength of the units. You can also combine special effects to each unit. Like Civ4, you can gain special skills for units when they win enough battles, such as the ability to increase their attack in friendly turf, or increase their defense when supported by other units. If you have 3 tanks, each with a different special skill, you get an army unit with all 3 skills. You can also combine one veteran unit with two non-veterans, and get a veteran army. Another new feature is the research bonus. To add emphasis to research everything, and not just the stuff you need to get to your favorite techs, you can get special bonuses when you research something before anyone else. Research gunpowder before anyone else? You get a free musket unit. Research printing press before anyone else? You get +2 production at all cities. It really encourages you to pay attention to your research and not ignore it to focus on one branch.

The game is fun but it does have a few flaws. For one, I notice that every so often there is a graphical glitch. Sometimes units don't show up during battles or enemies being killed by enemies are actually killing the others. It's really hard to describe but it makes the battles confusing sometimes when you watch your units getting destroyed by nothing. Sometimes the game glitches when you are trying to win. For example, I finally had enough gold to win by economic victory… and it would not let me build the World Bank. No explanation, just outright refused to let me build it, as if it was not even in the game. Seemed a little wildly unfair to me seeing as it was the only way to win before the computer won by sending a ship to Alpha Centauri.

Lastly, the game can suffer from some faults the other Civ games have. For example, it seems that when it really counts, enemies can defeat your forces even when your forces overpower them by more then half. Yet the only time you ever seem to have this kind of luck is when it has absolutely no bearing on anything, such as an isolated fight with a unit you could easily afford to use, meanwhile when they send a amazingly inferior force to your important city, the stone-wall defense units stationed there fall like a house of cards for no reason other then you did something to anger god that day. And of course there is the issue of the cooperative computer and border posting. Enemies will actively work together in harder modes, even coordinating their attacks on you even when they are at war with each other, apparently forgetting about that just to bump you off. And they always seem to rush their settler units as close to you as possible as fast as possible so you cannot expand out anymore because their boarders act as a barrier to you.

Considering the few graphical errors and the cheating difficulty on later levels, the game is still very fun. I have all 4 previous Civ games and I find myself playing this one more then any of them combined. The simplified gameplay mechanics, the fun cartoon look to all the units and such, and unique feel to each of the different playable nations makes you want to play over and over again. It's also a lot easier to play then the other games. With the simplified money system you don't have to worry about being punished for having too many units or buildings so you can expand as you wish without the computer leaping all over you due to your handy cap. This might make the game a little too easy for veteran Civ players but its still fun. The only problem I have with the multiplayer is the fact that everyone I've played against all have the exact same play style, which is pretty much relegated too ‘Zerg Rush armies from the start'. No one ever seems to try for any other victory style, they just mass rush all the armies their cities can pump out and ignore everything else. This leads you to getting a much more balanced enemy play style when going against the computer as they try for various different ways to win.

If you like Civ games, I would definitely suggest this game as a buy. Even if you are unfamiliar with Civ games or have not really liked any of them for being too complex or long or difficult, this one alleviates all of these major problems. Its definitely a good starting place for anyone if they ever wanted to try to get into Civ games but never found one geared more towards first time players. A definite fun game for all kinds.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/03/09

Game Release: Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (US, 07/08/08)