Sixteen Years of Civilization (Part 4 of 4)

Except for the first Civ's nostalgia factor, Civ IV is my favorite of them all. Civ IV is the first game since the first that Sid Meier was directly involved, and much of Civ IV's greatness may be due to that.

Civ IV has many very big changes. Corruption from Civ III has been removed, replaced with maintenance. Maintenance was in previous Civs, but before it applied to buildings in your city. This could have the effect of making big cities less useful than small cities. Now, there is maintenance for number of cities and distance of cities. This means that massive growth which was a useful strategy in the previous Civs will stifle your economy and research.

Also new is religion. Although ceremonial burial and monotheism were on the tech tree in previous games, and you could build temples and cathedrals, there was no distinction between them. And you can ask any crusader, it's not important that someone has a temple, but what that temple stands for. Computer nations will distrust you if you have a different national religion.

Another new concept is that of great people. Now a city will generate great people points from having wonders and specialists. When a city gets enough great people points, a great person will be born. There are five types of great people: engineers, merchants, scientists, artists and priests. All great people can give you a free technology, or become a super specialist in one of your cities. If you have more than one great person of different types, you can use them to send your civilization into a golden age. And each type has a special ability. An engineer can finish any building a city is working on, including wonders, an artist can give 4000 culture to a city, etc. But a great person can only do one of these things and then they're gone.

In previous games, there were different governments your nation could have. Despotism, monarchy, republic, democracy, etc. But they were pretty much set in stone. Democracy was always the best (of course, you needed certain technologies before you could be a democracy). The only consideration between governments was whether you were going to be at war or not. Communism and monarchy are good for war, while republic and democracy are good for peace. In Civ IV that's all changed. Now there are civics. There are five categories of civics, each of which has five mutually exclusive options: Government, which has options such as hereditary rule, and universal suffrage; Legal which has options like bureaucracy and free speech; Labor which includes slavery, caste system and emancipation; Economy which has free market and state property; and Religion which has theocracy and free religion. Each of the different options has different strengths and weaknesses. Now you can have a communistic economy while still having universal suffrage and free speech. This allows for much more flexibility in governments, adding to depth of gameplay.

Another new concept is health. Health replaced two concepts: pollution and population limits. Before, if you had a city with a lot of people and manufacturing power, it would make pollution, which you would need a worker to clean up. Also, a city could not grow above a certain population until it got an aqueduct and later a sewer system or hospital (depending on which game). Now, cities when a city gets unhealthy, its growth rate will go down, or even become negative. A city will be unhealthy because of large population, as well as certain buildings, like factories, and certain terrain, like jungles. A city can be more healthy by building other building, like hospitals, other terrain, like forests, and food resources, like cows, corn and fish.

Also important is the tech tree. Before, every advance had exactly two prerequisite advances. You had to have both prerequisites before you could get what they led to. In Civ IV it's much more flexible. Some advances have one prerequisite, some two, some even have three. But unlike the previous games, you don't have to have all of them to get it, just one. For example, animal husbandry, pottery and priesthood all lead to writing in Civ IV, but you only need one of them to get writing. (And a small note: in all the previous games, alphabet led to writing, opposite of Civ IV and opposite of how it actually developed.)

And in every game, the combat system was tweaked. In Civ IV, it got a complete overhaul, and it's probably the best system yet. Now, every unit has one number: strength. No more attack and defense. (Hit points and firepower are included in strength.) "But how can that be better?" you ask "Some units should be better at attacking and some should be better at defending." That's resolved by every unit getting special abilities. For example, a pikeman has a strength of 6 and a knight has a strength of 10. But the pikeman gets +100% strength against mounted units. Swordsmen get +10% strength when attacking a city. Longbowmen get +25% strength on hills and +25% strength when defending cities. Now, you can't just build a bunch of the strongest unit and stomp on your enemy, because every unit has their weaknesses.

In addition to that, experience has been redone. Now when a unit gets enough experience, it goes up a level, and it gets a promotion that you can choose. These promotions can make them stronger when in combat against archery units, or mounted units or gunpowder units, etc. Or the promotion can give them advantages on certain terrain. Or they can make friendly units around them heal more quickly. Or increased sight range or increased movement. The promotions make experienced units extremely valuable.

Addendum: Of course, Civ IV isn't perfect. One thing that I think needs to be changed in a future version is how food and growth works. It's been exactly the same in each game. A city makes food for itself - it can't get food from other cities or give food to other cities. When a certain amount of food has been stored the population goes up. That's pretty good for up to the industrial age. But at that point, a nation isn't going to let a city starve because it can't grow enough food. They ship food from cities with surplus. Also, growth rate stops being related to food supply since people can move around more easily.

Sixteen Years of Civilization (Part 3 of 4)

Although Civ III has improvements over Civ and Civ II, it is personally my least favorite. Which is not to say it's bad, merely less good.

One of the biggest reasons I don't like Civ III is that the combat system is resimplified. It's not so bad as the original, but it's not as good as Civ II. Although, with Civ III, it is explicitly clear how a veteran unit is better than a non-veteran. Veterans were in the previous games, and they were more likely to win a battle, but it was unclear by what mechanism. In Civ III, a more experience unit has more hitpoints.

Another concept executed imperfectly in Civ III is corruption: the farther a city is from its capital, the less productive it is. Although this was originally implemented in Civ II, it wasn't much of a consideration. Presumably in an effort to make the strategy of making as many cities as quickly as possible less feasible, corruption is much much worse. Unfortunately, that didn't work. Unproductive cities still add to your land area and population, and don't take anything away.

Though, Civ III does have many improvements over the first two games. Least among these is the new worker unit. In the first two games, settler units would make new cities, and build roads, etc. Now, settlers only make new cities, and only workers can make roads, etc.

Another small change is the removal of the caravan. In the first two games, in order to trade with foreign nations, you would need to build caravans. In Civ III, cities make trade routes automatically, and trading special resources is done through the diplomacy screen.

Speaking of resources, luxury and strategic resources have been added. In the first two games, a resource could give a city extra production, commerce or food. In Civ III there are still resources like that (called bonus resources), but now resources can also give you extra happiness (luxuries like gems, spices, or silk) and certain units require certain resources to build (for example, to build swordsmen, you must have iron. To build tanks, you must have oil.) This adds extra layers of strategy. If you lack an important strategic resource (horses, iron and coal are the most important resources) you can be in serious trouble.

Another change is that which civilization you play is no longer a merely cosmetic choice affecting your color and city names. Now, each civilization has a unique unit and particular characteristics that make them better at some things. For example the Chinese are industrious and militaristic, which means workers build improvements faster, and units are more likely to gain experience from battles. The unique unit is interesting but has little influence in how you play.

And the most important and best change in Civ III is culture. In Civ III, every city has a culture value, which determines how far out its borders go. Also, if a foreign city with low culture is next to a city with high culture, the low cultured city can rebel to join sides with its more cultural neighbor. In the original Civ, there were no national borders and in Civ II, borders were static at a few tiles away from your cities. Now, with Civ III, you can expand your borders without be expansionist or warlike.

In the first two Civs there were only two ways to win, kill everyone else, or be the first to build a spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Those are still options, but now you can win by having a very large culture or by winning an election in the UN.

Sixteen Years of Civilization (Part 2 of 4)

And now, it's time for the second part. (I'd have gotten to it sooner, but I was busy with midterms and such.)

Many of the differences between Civ and Civ II don't affect the gameplay much, for example, better graphics, new civilizations, new units, new technologies, etc. These will not be my focus.

There are some interesting changes to purely aesthetic points. With diplomacy, you don't speak to the leader of an foreign nation as you do in the first game, but rather their ambassador, who stands in front of a portrait of the leader. In the original, when your people decided you were doing a good job, they would improve your palace. In Civ II, they improve your throne room.

In each successive game, the computer players cheat less. In this game, when a computer nation begins building a wonder, it is announced, to verify that they are not just being given them a turn before you finish them.

An interesting change, not major, but significant enough to be mentioned separately, is that rivers provide extra movement, like roads. This makes it easier to explore along rivers, making it more historically accurate.

One major change is diplomacy. In the original Civ, you can either be at war with an another nation, or at peace. Along with that, your actions did not affect how other nations dealt with you. In Civ II, you can have an alliance, be at peace, be neutral, have a cease-fire, or be at war. This adds some depth, but more importantly, a new diplomacy concept is that of reputation. If you break a peace-treaty, or sneak attack someone, the computer remembers and will be less likely to trust you.

The biggest and most significant change is the change to the combat system. In Civ II, units still have an attack value and a defense value, but now they also have hit points and firepower. Hit points are very simple. When they are gone, the unit dies, and if a unit does nothing in a turn, they will gradually regenerate.This way if a unit is attacked multiple times in a turn, each successive attack is more likely to succeed, making combat more realistic. Firepower is how many hit points of damage a unit does when it makes a successful hit. Two units will continue trading hits until one is killed. This makes combat much more realistic, though still does not alleviate the "phalanx kills tank" effect.

Possibly the coolest change (though it doesn't affect a normal game) is the enormous ability for customization. There is a special editor to make your own units, terrain, civilizations, technologies, and everything you need to make your own game. Although some of these concepts are in the later games, the degree and ease of doing them is unmatched by any other Civ games.

Sixteen Years of Civilization (Part 1 of 4)

In my opinion, the best turn-based strategy computer games, and possibly the best computer games period, belong to the Civilization series.

There have been four installments, though they aren't sequels. Each subsequent Civilization game is pretty much the same as the one before it, but with added concepts and improved gameplay.

The object is to, well, make a civilization. In every game you start in 4000 BC with one settler, who can found your first city. From there, you expand, build more cities, conquer enemy cities, keep your population happy and research scientific advances to the modern age.

Appropriately, my first post will be about the first game.

You start by selecting your difficulty level (chieftain, warlord, prince, king, emperor), and your nation (ranging from Aztecs to Germans to Babylonians to Zulus).

You start the game with one or two settlers (one is more probable). Settlers can found new cities, and they can build roads, farms, mines and other terrain improvements.

The game is a balancing act of military might, economic might, and population happiness. If you aren't strong enough militarily, a neighbouring civilization will conquer you. If you aren't strong enough economically, you will stagnate technologically and be unable to buy useful things. If you don't keep your population happy, they will revolt.

You can gain special abilities from building wonders of the world. For example you can see every city in the world by building SETI. Building Darwin's Voyage (don't ask me how that's built) gives you two free technologies. The Great Library will give you any technology known by two other civilizations. Hoover Dam will give you a free hydro-electric dam in every city on the same continent. Some other wonders that are in the game, but I don't remember what they do are: The Pyramids, The Hanging Gardens, The Great Lighthouse, The Colossus, and the Great Wall.

There are only two ways to win Civ I. Either you conquer every other civilizations (in which case you get a cinematic showing every one you killed), or you build a spaceship to go to Alpha Centauri (in which case you get a cinematic showing your its colonization). You also win if you have the highest score (determined by population, technology, how many civilizations you conquered, how much money you have, etc.) at 2100 AD, but I don't think that really counts as winning.

As you might expect, the first was, from an objective standpoint, the worst of the series. The worst flaw Civ I is the AI. It's a very primitive AI and in order to keep up with you, it cheats. A lot. The AI doesn't build things and make things. It just magically gets them. For higher difficulty levels, it just cheats more.

The next worst thing is the combat system. Every unit has one attack value and one defense value. There are no hit points so a unit that just got attacked ten times in one turn and survived is just as strong as one who didn't get attacked at all. Also, there is only a single "dice roll" to determine the winner. Which means about once every twenty times, an ancient age phalanx will beat a tank.

But, hey, it's the first one. It was revolutionary for its time, and it's good for a nostalgia trip. And its downsides don't prevent it from being fun.