You can call me Meier

Civilization III was the great disappointment of my gaming career. Not only was it a Civilization game that didn’t live up to the hype, but it had great ideas to fix many of the gamey issues from the two previous titles in the series – and those fell flat. Great concepts like strategic resources ended up biting the game in the ass – imagine starting a game on a continent with no horses, or worse, no oil! By far the greatest disappointment was the AI, which was blatantly cheating and unfair – always sharing technology even when in war amongst itself, always seeing everything on the map, always spamming new cities in gaps among your cultural borders.

It was with great apprehension then that I picked up Civilization IV, knowing that essentially the same development team was working on it. Would they make their ideas from Civilization III work? Did they pay attention to the complaints about the AI and gameplay, or did the constant whining make them deaf? It sat on my desk and possibly would never have been installed if not for the generosity of 2K Games, expressed so visibly in the beautiful, detailed manual. In this manual, lead designer Soren Johnson has a thick section dedicated to explaining the team’s vision, ideas and the way that Civilization IV evolved.

Setting up a custom game

The beginning of the Mongol world empire

The blue circle indicates a recommended goal

Amazingly, Firaxis got everything right. Changing anything when it isn’t broken is always risky, especially in a firmly entrenched franchise with legions of fans, as Civ III proved. Firaxis gambled anyway and changed Civilization IV more than anyone dreamed and came up with the best game in the series while still delivering the same rich experience and feeling of familiar comfort.

The AI is improved and no longer cheats so obviously, at least not until the difficulty levels ramp up – but the game is candid about that too. Building cities feels just right – it’s no longer punishing to have more as in Civilization III, but there are effective deterrents to trying to spam the entire map with them as well. The various ways to win a victory, whether through domination, global conquest, a space race, culture and so on, are generally balanced and feel right. Wars are often long and difficult, and victories can be Pyrrhic, but they’re not so grueling as to be discouraged. The civilization traits, like Creative, Organized and Aggressive have meaning for both the behavior of the civilization and in terms of bonuses. The bonuses are just the right size – large enough to have a noticeable effect on gameplay and to influence the player’s strategy, but small enough as not to be overwhelming. Consequently, a civ that doesn’t enjoy the Aggressive trait need not fear war with another that does, but having the Aggressive trait would help win a few battles. The AI also tends to build itself around its traits, but again, they don’t blindly focus on what they do best.

The first warrior, of many

Research selection

Woo! We can fish!

Civilization IV delivers probably the closest feeling to building a nation of any of the Civ titles. The player isn’t limited in the number of cities he builds, but there are drawbacks to trying to spam the map. Each extra city costs more and more upkeep – and of course player attention. In a typical game, even on a “Huge” map, a civilization typically weighs in at a dozen cities in size and it’s quite possible to win with as little as five or six, should you go for a cultural victory.