Civilization: Revolution

Civilization Revolution is a game produced by Firaxis, known for games like Pirates, Civilization series and Railroads. The game was published by 2K Games in July 2008. It’s released for the iPhone OS, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The Civilization-series can best be described as an enhanced chess game, you play on a board and make moves with your units, select what researches you want to do and which buildings you want to build.

In Civilization: Revolution the player can win by 4 methods:

• --By conquering the enemy
• --By researching and developing a spacecraft and sending it off to Alpha-Centauri to colonize that planet
• --By creating 20 Great People, Monuments and converted cities and building the United Nations
• --By accumulating 20.000 gold and building the World Bank

The graphics in this game are nice, the creators have chosen a cartoony style. And of course, just like in previous games, the scale is way off, making it easier to spot your units. One of the new features in this game is that you now have advisors, which talk in a style similar to the Sims-series, which means that they just talk gibberish, in for example Civilization 4, when you selected a unit it would greet you in its native language, in Civilization: Revolution, they don’t speak at all, aside from the screaming in battles.

One of my complaints with this game is that it has been oversimplified when comparing it to Civilization 4, in order to make matches less time-consuming and the game less overwhelming. I personally was disappointed by it, since quite a lot of features had been stripped or had been made easier. For example, now there are treasures/bandit camps scattered around, which your computer opponents often don’t even touch, automatically giving you an advantage. Also, the bandit camps no longer hold a thread to you, whilst in Civ 4 they could really mess up your plans and those of your enemies, they also were very opportunistic since they would attack you when you were waging a war and your troops had left home, in Civilization Revolution, they simple remain in their cities, they haven’t even got a territory, unlike in Civilization 4. Another complaint about Civ 5, is that the amount of leaders you can pick from has been reduced to 16, whilst Civ 4 had 26, not even counting the ones that came in expansion packs. Although they did put a few new ones in, like a Zulu king(don’t ask me why, since I don’t really think that they’ve contributed anything to world history), they left some of the better ones out, like for example the Dutch or any European nation for that matter, except for England, Germany, France, Spain, Greece and the Roman Empire. Even though, there are many other European countries that have taken their role in world history as well, and have had their great leaders as well.

Another thing that has been changed when comparing to previous games in the series, is the scenarios, in previous games you played various great and well-known battles whilst in this game, you just play following a set of extra rules in order to win and those battles are all fictional. This takes away a bit of the learning concept which was present in the past games, I actually find this a bit disappointing , since I always loved playing great historical battles and changing the outcome of them. Not everything holding historical information has been ripped out, though, the Civilopedia is still present if you want to read up on certain great leaders or monuments.

Another thing that bothered me is that the game shifted to a more combat oriented gameplay, whereas in the previous games you’d only use war as one of the last means to expand, in this game you can’t go 5 rounds without either starting a war, getting one declared on you, getting threatened or making peace after obliterating a good amount of units of the enemy. The communication between you and the computer opponents have been simplified as well, a lot of options have been removed, in past games you were able to build a very positive relation with a nation and make it your ally, which was very fruitful. You can still buy and sell technologies but whereas you used to be able to use a very deep trading system, now you only use currency to buy certain technologies. In previous games you could also trade cities, sign contracts and pacts, and many other things. All that has been ripped out.

As far as sound and music go, the game scores average, the sounds you hear from tiles, like the sound of the sea when you’re hovering above a beach and so on. The music sadly doesn’t have any background music, so the only music you’ll hear is the one in the menu and when somebody declares war on you.

Now it seems that I’ve drilled this title into the ground, but this isn’t the case. Whilst there have been things left out and some complaints, the gameplay remains to be classic and addictive. It certainly isn’t a waste of money buying this game, if you like strategy games. But if you’re a fan of the series and liked the depth of the game, you might get disappointed, but it’ll still keep you occupied for quite some time.