INTRO:
With the fourth entry, the Civiliztion series enters the 3D realm. However, what would appeal more to the series' veterans is the return of sophisticated turn-based gameplay designs. It is, however, not without problems, especially those concerning luck.
PREMISE:
The Civilization series was always about players taking control of races and developing them so that they can become masters of the world, forging a global super-state along the way. There are many ways to go around this: conquest, diplomacy and science, all of which will be described later.
GAME SPEEDS:
Any game in the Civilization series thus far has turn-based gameplay. Each civilization, i.e. each player, takes its turn to develop itself, while the rest just wait for their turns.
However, how quickly a session can end in terms of turns depends on the game speed that the hosting player has chosen for the session. The game speed determines the outputs of cities; at the lowest speed setting, cities churn things out very slowly, when compared to how fast they can do so at the highest speed setting. This also extends to their research outputs.
The high speed settings are meant for quick gameplay sessions, though ultimately the gameplay is such that one should not expect sessions with the highest speed setting to be as short as, say, a multiplayer match for a sci-fi shooter. Only patient players would take to this game.
As for the low speed settings, these are suitable for those who want to have more chances to bounce back from near-defeat; at the higher speed settings, things can move so fast that there are no second chances for losing players.
RACES & LEADERS:
Practically speaking, the different civilizations in this game are fundamentally the same; they will build up in the same manner, use functionally similar units and have access to the same methods to gain superiority over the rest. However, every race has special traits and leaders that may suit certain playstyles better, though the player can only pick one of each.
A leader of a civilization is eternal. However, this also means that the leader is nothing more than just additional traits for the player's civilization. There are differences between different leaders for different civilizations, but some of these differences can only be seen when the player is engaging in diplomacy with A.I.-controlled civilizations.
Anyway, the leaders can be categorized into several archetypes. There are leaders that are suitable for military pursuits, the nurturing of special individuals that will be described later, the maintenance of cities, the generation of wealth, the flourishing of industry and other endeavours.
Not all civilizations have leaders of all archetypes, however. For example, the Aztec empire does not have any leader that is of the "organized" archetype and in lieu of these, it has leaders that are inclined towards military conquest, so the Aztec Empire is not exactly well suited for civilized supremacy.
TUTORIAL:
The game can be a lot to take in, so it is pleasing to know that there is a tutorial. In it, Sid Meier himself provides the narration.
The tutorial insists on having the player take instructions step by step, disabling any other actions that he/she is not told to take. It is hand-holding, but it is enough to demonstrate the fundamentals of the game.
If there is any significant issue with the tutorial, it is that it picks the leader and civilization for the player. It does mention the differences between leaders and civilizations, but that is all to the lesson. The tutorial also does not mention the implication of having different game speeds.
A.I.:
Given the length of a game session, even on the highest speed settings, it is more likely than not that most players would play against the A.I. in their sessions. Like its predecessors, the A.I. in Civilization IV thinks in the long-term, with some measures for short-term gains. All of them are fundamentally designed this way, though different leaders may have different methods and plans to reach the same ends.
For example, an A.I.-controlled player that uses an aggressive leader is likely to be warlike, or at least hoarding resources for a sudden military build-up. Another example is the cultured leader, who despite his/her personal inclinations is likely to be eager to expand his/her territory and assets anyway, albeit via culture-based methods. The different leaders also have different choices of civics; this kind of difference is not dependent on their archetype, which helps to give the different leaders some unique personality.
The A.I. does sometimes make mistakes due to not knowing what they are not supposed to know anything about, such as impending flanking attacks on their territories. This actually makes them seem better designed; many games before Civilization IV resorts to A.I. that cheats by knowing what human players would not know. The A.I. in Civilization IV is certainly quite convincingly genuinely smart.
However, they do not make mistakes in the long-term. If they are not dealt any crippling blow, they are likely to prevail, even over the human player. This makes single-player sessions quite challenging, which would be pleasant to players who are tired of idiotic A.I.-controlled opponents.
WEALTH, CULTURE AND SCIENCE:
There are three kinds of "currencies" that the player has to juggle.
The first is Wealth. This is the player's most important currency, as it can be converted into the other two or poured into projects to hurry their completion. Taking such shortcuts is a very expensive endeavour, but the benefits may be worth the cost.
The rate of the aforementioned conversions is usually one to one, but the player may unlock technologies or obtain Wonders that alter the conversion rates. The conversion is one-way though; there are no refunds, though the game could have been more sophisticated if the conversion can work both ways.
Culture is the currency that the player needs for a plan for a diplomatic victory. The amount of culture that a player has is directly proportional to his/her influence, which is a game feature that will be described later. It also determines how strongly a player can hold onto his/her territory, as a very cultured civilization can be surprisingly resistant to invasions, if it is large enough to prevent itself from being overrun in a few turns.
Science is a currency that only goes into research. Every player has a tech tree of sorts that shows the technologies that is available from age to age. To unlock a technology, science points have to be invested into the research project that would do so. There are other ways to gain technologies, but researching them is the main way, so science points would be essential to any player, regardless of playstyle.
Initially, culture and science points can only be obtained by converting wealth into either. However, interestingly, this conversion can only be performed using the player's wealth income, and not wealth reserves. This is an understandable limitation though, as a player that has gotten a windfall of wealth through some means would otherwise gain an unfair advantage by converting cash in the treasury into culture or science.
CITIES - INTRODUCTORY:
Like the previous games in the series, cities are the player's main assets. They are the player's sources of wealth, units, research, culture and just about anything else. If the player loses all of his/her cities and fails to obtain one – any one, including that of other players - within a few turns, he/she loses.
CITIES – STARTING OUT:
All game sessions start with the player having a settler unit, which has to found the player's first city and also its capital, preferably somewhere strategic and soon, as time is of the essence. If this settler is lost, usually due to attacks by barbarians (which will be described later), the player loses outright.
Unfortunately, this means that luck is a strong factor in deciding which player has a good headstart. The starting locations are randomized and although every player is promised some nearby resources that can be exploited, whether these resources are available very early on or not are uncertain. Very lucky players may obtain resources early on, giving them a tremendous advantage; terribly unfortunate players would start next to a desert with plenty of oil resources that can only be discovered and exploited far, far into the session – if he/she/it even survives.
CITIES – PRODUCTION & PROJECTS:
Every city has a production rating; this represents the effort that it can spend on projects. A city's production is mainly spent on constructing buildings or recruiting units. However, some time into a session, the player may unlock technologies that allow cities to spend their production on creating wealth, culture or science.
Most projects take more than one turn to complete, unless the city has a production rating that is so high that it can finish a small project in a single turn. However, any city can only ever complete one project in a turn, so the player may want to consider the efficiencies of different cities when assigning projects.
Cities can actually shift resources that have been invested into a project into other projects without any apparent loss in efficiency. This can be exploited, especially in single-player sessions. However, if the invested resources exceed the resources that are needed for the other project, the excess resources are lost.
The production rating of a city mainly depends on the tiles that it can work on, which will be described later, as well as its own facilities, e.g. the buildings within the city. A city that is deprived of these sources of production can be quite useless, so the player may want to consider where to place new cities.
GROWTH & CITY LEVELS:
A city can grow, but only if it has the food for that. This food generally has to be derived from the city's surroundings, so it should be situated in a place where food sources are plentiful. There are buildings that can provide food if only to substitute tiles, but the time and effort that are needed to build them could have been used for something else instead.
Anyway, a city that grows in levels will gain benefits and drawbacks. The benefits will be mentioned later, as it concerns another feature of the game.
The level of a city also represents the amount of squalor that is in it. As the city grows, squalor comes along and this cannot be eliminated. Squalor not only reduces the growth rate of a city but also detract from its happiness. The only way to counteract squalor is to have the city having some sources of health, which are very rare outside of also-rare facilities that provide health services.
This means that cities with very high levels, in the excess of 15, are very rare. However, they are still possible, but the observant player would notice that it would be spending its workers (more on these later) on tiles that maintain the level of the city, and not other assets that improve its productivity. This means that high level cities are not practical, though this is not told to the player, unfortunately.
There are also other sources of bad health, such as industry-related buildings and tiles with jungles and floodplains.
It has to be noted here that one of the benefits of the Granary building, which is to let a city start at the 50% point of meeting the next level of growth, and its apparent lack of any downsides practically makes the Granary building a must-have for almost all players.
CITY – HAPPINESS:
Every city has a happiness rating, which also directly informs the player of the loyalty of the city. The happiness rating is the single statistic of a city that is affected by many, many factors, from internal problems such as squalor to external ones such as the influence of a nearby rival city.
If the happiness rating of a city goes into the negative, resentment grows and eventually the social unrest would lead to a revolt. Once a city revolts, it spawns some military units that will immediately attack any occupying military unit of the player's; if the city revolts due to influence from rival players, they immediately belong to those players.
The level of the city also drops due to the upheaval, so the consequences of a revolt are indeed severe. However, if a player manages to suppress the revolt, the city will be rendered immune to revolt and resistant to some sources of unhappiness for many turns, as depicted by points of martial law, which contributes to the happiness rating (oddly enough).
At first glance, there is nothing to be gained from having more happiness than is needed to keep cities loyal. However, the excess happiness of a city goes towards a counter that takes in excess happiness from other cities. This counter in turn influences the chance that the player's civilization will trigger a Golden Age, which will be described later.
CITY – MAINTENANCE COSTS:
Although buildings can be built for practically free in cities, they do incur costs to run. These costs take away from the cities' wealth incomes; the cities' books may even go into the red, thus causing said cities to be liabilities instead of assets.
There are ways to reduce these maintenance costs, fortunately, and it is in the interest of players who like to expand that they seek out and use these ways, which usually involve the building of structures that are associated with the imposition of order.
These costs prevent players with expansionist streaks from gaining too large an advantage from creating cities at a rapid rate; they also deter players from creating super-cities, which can cost a lot to maintain. They are a welcome gameplay-balancing measure.
If the player does not have the income to maintain cities, the deficit becomes a source of unhappiness.
FOUNDING CITIES & DISTANCE FROM CAPITAL:
New cities are needed in order to expand the player's territories without warfare. To found them, the player has to sacrifice the growth of existing cities to fuel the creation of settler units, which are not produced like other units. These settlers has to be then sent out to locations that are suitable for the placement of cities, such as near natural resources.
A city cannot be founded close to another one, however, so the player cannot cluster cities together for purposes of defence. This is made more understandable if the player considers that cities cannot share tiles, as will be elaborated later.
The distance of a city from the capital city is also a factor of consideration. The further away it is, the higher its maintenance costs are. It also loses bonuses to happiness from proximity with the capital, which means that far-flung cities can be rather unruly.
These distance-related costs are further gameplay-balancing measures to understandably prevent players from expanding – or conquering - too quickly and thus gaining too much of an advantage from having a lot of territory.
BARBARIANS, TREASURES & ROGUES:
In the early stages of a session, the players may be beset by so-called "barbarians"; these are actually low-tech units that are not owned by any player. They roam about causing grief for everyone that they come across. Encountering them early on can be a disaster, as they outright sack any city or tile improvement that they come across. Fortunately, the player that starts a session can choose whether to include barbarians or not, which is an option that would be pleasing to players who despise having a terrible start due to bad luck.
Next, there are treasures, usually represented in the form of native villages that the player's scouts can interact with for various, always-positive benefits. This is usually in the form of loose wealth that goes into the player's treasury, but it may be a free, experienced warrior unit, a free settler or even an early-stage technology.
These treasures are randomly scattered throughout the game world; their benefits are also randomly determined. This means that very lucky players may get a terribly unfair head-start from them if there happens to be treasures of great value to their plans, which may not please players who despise having luck affect gameplay. Fortunately, for the latter sort of players, this option can be disabled by the player that starts the session.
WONDERS:
The most important and lucrative buildings are Wonders. These are based on real-world locations, such as the Taj Mahal. These buildings can only be built after certain associated technologies have been obtained, and even so, they take a lot of resources and time to build.
Then, there are further limitations. Generally, there are two types of Wonders, with the common similarity that they have is that a player can only have one of any Wonder, if he/she can build it.
There are World Wonders, which can only be owned by the player that managed to build it first; any players that happen to be building the same Wonder will have their resources refunded, but the time that had been spent cannot be regained. However, the player that has built a World Wonder will be announced to the others.
Next, there are National Wonders, which any player can have. They tend to be just as expensive as Epic Wonders, however, and their successful construction will be announced to other players anyway.
Wonders generally confer civilization-wide benefits, though some greatly improve the capabilities of the city that they are in. Most, if not all, Wonders generate culture, so generally any Wonder would bolster a playstyle that is oriented around generating culture. However, Wonders do have archetypes, such as Wonders that improve production or boost research. There are also Wonders with one-off benefits, such as immediately completing the current research project or granting a Great Person when built (more on Great People later).
Some other Wonders are military-oriented, such as the Heroic Epic. Curiously enough, most of these are considered as National Wonders, meaning that every civilization can have them. Such availability is perhaps understandable, as it prevents players from hogging military-centric Wonders and getting an unfair military advantage.
INFLUENCE & TERRITORIES:
The cities that are under a player's rule radiate influence on its immediate surroundings, which is shown by a tinting of the latter with the player's chosen colour. This is land that the city's workers can work on, and is also practically part of the player's territories. How much turf that a city has depends on its age and capability at generating influence; old cities that have been generating a lot of influence for a long time would have many tiles that are under control.
The tiles that are closest to a city are the first ones to fall under its influence. The further ones will take some time to be converted over, with more time needed the further they are; the speed of the process is dependent on the influence that the city is generating, as well as any other factors such as bonuses that affect the generation of influence or capture of unaffiliated tiles.
Tiles that are owned by other civilizations can also be captured this way, though the player will need to generate substantially more influence than is needed if the tiles had otherwise been "neutral". The player's influence generation must surpass that of the opposing civilizations for this to happen; if the converse is the case, the player will be seeing his/her tiles taken over instead. Rival cities take a lot longer to be taken over, but they can be overwhelmed regardless.
This game feature of influence-based territory allows the player to achieve conquest by having his/her influence creep into the territories of other players, be they allies or actual enemies. Such a method can take a while, but it is difficult to counter without the victim going into actual war with the player.
There may be an issue of gameplay balance with this feature as the player with massive amounts of influence can retain them even if their sources have been taken over or otherwise eliminated. Undoing the damage done by said player's creeping influence can take many turns, and in the meantime, opponents will have to contend with any influence-based capabilities that the player has, such as the automatic attrition damage that he/she automatically inflicts on invading armies.
Furthermore, the invading player is unable to use any tiles in the vicinity of a city that he/she/it has conquered, as long as the tiles remain under the influence of the other player. This is stacked on top of the problem of having to deal with the livid populations of occupied cities.
However, this feature made the competition between players a lot more sophisticated and more importantly, gives the player that has concentrated on developing influence a fighting chance when he/she/it is pitted against players that have concentrated on harder assets.
There is one minor flaw with this game feature though. The game does not appear to display tiles that are under the overlapping influences of multiple cities clearly. The cities cannot share these tiles, i.e. only one of them can peruse the tile, yet the player cannot know which one is using which tile unless he/she checks the screens for tiles that are under a city's control for each city. This can be quite a hassle.
CITIES WORKING ON TILES:
Speaking of tiles being worked on by cities, each city can "work" on one or more tiles around it; the tile that it is on is automatically worked. The number of other tiles that it can work on is dependent on its level.
Anyway, for every level that a city has, it gains one "general-purpose" worker. This worker can be assigned to work on one of the tiles that the city has influence over. The benefits of these titles depend on their terrain type, any natural resources on them and the improvements that they have; there would be more on these later.
Therefore, it is in the player's interest to make sure that the best tiles are being worked on, as there tends to be more tiles than there are workers. Furthermore, these tiles can be continuously improved as the player unlocks more related technologies for better benefits.
The player can check the tiles that a city is working on by bringing up a screen which conveniently shows which tiles are under the city's influence and which are being worked on. This screen also shows the workers that are available to the city, as well as any special workers that are living in that city; there will be more on these later. The benefits from the tiles that are being worked on are summed up, effectively becoming part of the output of the city.
Conveniently, the game warns the player that he/she has cities with unassigned workers if he/she had not set the city to automatically distribute its workers.
That said, the A.I. is generally not conscious of the player's current needs when it distributes workers. It will always go for the highest revenues of food and coin when assigning workers, but if the player wants specific kinds of outputs, the player has to manually assign workers.
For example, if the player wants to assign workers on tiles that generate influence or research points, he/she has to do so manually and refrain from setting the assignment of workers to automatic.
Tiles that are not being occupied by the enemy can be worked on, but those that are occupied are not just rendered useless, but are also at risk of being razed. Razing a tile grants some wealth to the player that plundered it, but also reduces the assets that the tile has, which may or may not be to the preference of said invading player, but definitely to the detriment of the owning player.
If a city is hit with social unrest, workers may refuse to be work; the number of strikers depends on the deficit in its happiness rating. The workers that go on strike are usually the general workers, but they can be specialized workers, which will be mentioned later.
TYPES OF TILES:
The world map that the player plays with is represented via a grid of tiles, all of which are hexagonal. This does not mean that the world map looks polygonal or otherwise too unnatural. Instead of restricting a tile to one type of terrain, it may have a mix of different terrains, and this is reflected in the benefits that the tile can provide if it is worked on – if any.
There are tiles that are simply unproductive, such as desert and ice tiles, which are next to useless and inimical to life.
The tiles that are actually productive vary tremendously, from the relatively common plains and hills that are easy to immediately exploit to tiles that are difficult to develop but offer long-term benefits, such as jungle and mountain tiles, which can provide a lot of production points if the player has unlocked the technologies that better exploit them.
Speaking of jungle tiles, there are forest and jungle tiles that offer both short-term and long-term benefits. The vegetation that they have can be hacked down to provide immediate boosts of production points to the nearest city, but the tiles are converted over to mundane tiles. However, these tiles can have special improvements that other tiles cannot have; these improvements will be described later.
In addition, jungle and forest tiles can actually spread to tiles that do not have improvements, which may or may not be to the player's preference (especially jungle tiles, which are sources of bad health). On the other hand, a shrewd player can keep some forests and jungles around, if only to cut them down later for a quick production boost.
Cities cannot be placed on water tiles, obviously enough, but they can be worked on by cities regardless, if their influence can reach out over bodies of water. Water tiles generally provide only food and wealth, however.
TILES WITH NATURAL RESOURCES:
The tiles with natural resources are typically the most productive of tiles and understandably the most sought after. There are also additional benefits to be had from securing tiles with natural resources, if the player has unlocked the necessary technologies and facilities to make these available. For example, Dyes may increase happiness throughout the entire civilization if the player has built the Wonder that allows this.
There are a variety of natural resources, but generally they are likely to be associated with certain terrain types. For example, most minerals would appear on mountain and hill tiles. However, there are a few that may appear almost anywhere, such as oil wells, though generally, any tile can have only one natural resource. Such predictability makes it easier for an experienced player to decide where to found cities.
Not all natural resources are immediately visible to the player though; some are hidden until the player unlocks the technology that can exploit them. For example, Oil Wells are not visible until the player researches the technology for oil exploration. Such designs can sometimes lead to pleasant surprises, when the player realizes that a city that was bereft of any tiles with natural resources earlier is now surrounded with a few valuable tiles upon unlocking said technologies.
It is worth noting here that cities cannot be founded on natural resources, and that natural resources that appear when their associated technologies are unlocked always spawn away from cities.
IMPROVEMENTS FOR TILES, WORKERS & ROADS:
Almost all tiles can be improved to increase their yields. Only one type of improvement can be placed on a tile, but these improvements are practically free; there is generally no cost associated with their construction, with the exception of a few very special improvements that cannot be obtained through the usual ways.
There are some general-purpose improvements, such as farms that can be placed on almost any flatland tile but the type of the tile may determine how effective the improvement is. For example, said farms are best placed on grasslands, or even better, tiles with wheat or other grain resources, which greatly increases their bonuses to the yields of the tiles.
Certain improvements are only unique to certain tiles. For example, Lumbermills can only be placed on forest and jungle tiles, but they provide production points without having to remove the forest and jungle from the tiles.
Although most improvements can be created for free on tiles using Workers, how quickly the Workers can build them is an important consideration. The more advanced the improvement, the longer it takes to be built, especially if it has to be built from scratch. Existing improvements will generally not be automatically upgraded when the affiliated technology has been unlocked, so Workers have to be sent over to upgrade them.
Considering the strategic value of tiles around cities, players would likely have to have a handful of Workers running about improving tiles. Therefore, it is convenient that Workers can be set to automatically build and upgrade improvements. However, the player may have to manually assign Workers to build/upgrade particularly crucial improvements, namely those that exploit natural resources, as the Workers will, by default, work on general-purpose improvements.
Speaking of natural resources, they cannot be made available to every city in the player's civilization until they are connected to each other, usually via a network of roads. Roads can be built on tiles in addition to improvements, and they also happen to speed up the movement of units that use them.
However, such conveniences have to be balanced against the adverse effect of roads on the yields of tiles. For example, a road cutting through farmland causes its food output to drop marginally, which can be a problem if a city is teetering on starvation.
Such a drawback is understandable, as a player would otherwise build roads all over the map if only to facilitate the movement of units.
Furthermore, if opposing military units occupy any stretch of road, that stretch of road is considered as blocked and thus affects the network of cities. Such a design makes invasion a more sophisticated activity than one would think it is.
It is in the player's interest that he/she has as many Worker units as possible, but there are limitations that discourage this. The most important of these is that Worker units are created in the same way as Settlers; their creation rate is dependent on the growth rate of the city that has been assigned to create them. Thus, the growth of the city is stalled, until the workers have been produced. Therefore, a player is prevented from having too great a head-start by having many Workers.
SPECIAL MENTION – COTTAGE IMPROVEMENT:
Unlike other improvements, the Cottage improvement actually grows on its own over time, not unlike cities. The Cottage grows into a Hamlet, then a Village and finally a Town, practically becoming a satellite of its associated city. However, it can only grow if it is worked on, and yet it shrinks if it is neglected. Certain technologies that increase the yield of these mini-settlements only work if they have grown to the required size.
Such limitations are quite understandable, considering that the mini-settlement improvement is the most common wealth-yielding improvement. If the player intends to extract a lot of wealth from his/her tiles via mini-settlements, the payback can only occur later into the session when they have grown into their higher forms; the player will not be able to get an unfair advantage in wealth (which, it has to be reminded here, can be readily converted into science and culture) early on. Furthermore, this advantage, when it comes later, comes at the opportunity cost of not being able to use the tiles for other improvements.
This is a nuanced design decision on Firaxis's part, which speak well of their calibre at balancing the advantages of the different economic decisions that the player may make.
WATER TILES:
Water-based tiles get a section of their own as they are a lot less sophisticated than land-based tiles, yet have enough designs of their own to be interestingly different from the latter.
Firstly, water tiles can only be worked on by water-based worker units. Secondly, there appears to be two types of water tiles: shallow water and deep water. Most early-age water-borne units are not capable of going into deep water, thus limiting travel over deep water to bigger ships, namely those that are associated with the colonial/imperial era and later.
Otherwise, these two kinds of tiles do not appear to have strategic qualities that are intrinsic to them. This means that that numbers and the types of ships that are in navies are the main factors in naval battles, which can seem straight-forward and dull.
Weather, namely storms, can affect combat over water tiles, however, but storms move about turn by turn, so they are hardly reliable factors in battle.
Roads cannot be built on water, of course, but cities that have harbours (which can only be built in cities that are next to bodies of water, regardless of how small it is) are considered as automatically connected to other cities that have harbours of their own and are next to the same bodies of water.
This is an important consideration, as unlike cities on land that are connected by roads, they cannot be denied access to natural resources as easily. However, if opposing navies happen to be right next to a coastal city, the coastal city is automatically considered to be blockaded and thus cannot receive access to natural resources that are provided by the other coastal cities.
If these cities are connected via in-land rivers, or more precisely, tiles with rivers, they are considered as automatically connected, conveniently enough. This is a nuanced design that many players – and even the designers of other civilization-building games - tend to overlook.
CITY WORKERS:
The aforementioned workers that improve tiles are units that move about the world map. Cities have their own workers, called "city workers" here for convenience.
Anyway, as mentioned earlier, every city has its team of general-purpose workers that can be assigned to work on tiles. Alternatively, they can also be assigned to work within the city itself in its facilities for some other benefits that the tiles cannot provide; in-game, they are considered as "specialists". Usually, these are other sources of wealth, production or food, but may also be facilities that provide scientific or culture points, or a mixture of outputs.
However, perhaps as a gameplay-balancing design, there is generally a limit to how many workers can be assigned as specialists. They also happen to take away from the food income that is needed to grow a city.
There are also workers of different sorts other than the general-purpose ones, but these generally cannot be assigned to work on tiles. For example, there are workers that are dedicated to producing scientific or culture points, but like general-purpose workers, they can be affected by social unrest and refuse to work.
GOLDEN AGE:
If the player had been particularly successful in maintaining his/her civilization and keeping cities productive, he/she may be rewarded with a Golden Age that gives him/her a further edge.
The factors that lead to the start of Golden Age vary. The aforementioned mechanism of happiness of cities is one factor, though it is not an entirely reliable one. The most reliable way to start a Golden Age is to expend a Great Person, which will be described later.
Anyway, a Golden Age greatly increases the productivity of cities, whether they are creating wealth, working on a project or helping to finish a research project. Therefore, a Golden Age is most effective when the player has productive cities, but is otherwise useless if the player does not have them.
RECRUITING UNITS:
All cities can produce units, but with varying degrees of efficiency. Cities that have been kitted out to produce military units produce them with one or two levels of experience already achieved. Cities that have very high production ratings can churn them out the quickest, but they can burn through a lot of gold quickly, if the units happen to cost gold to make, which tends to be the case for units in the advanced ages.
SIDE MENTION ON CITIES:
Considering all of the game features concerning cities that have been mentioned earlier, managing cities can be a handful. This can become overwhelming when the player has one too many cities under his/her control.
Unfortunately, he/she cannot depend on the A.I. to do the managing for him/her, despite the option to do so. As mentioned earlier, the A.I. is not aware of the player's plans and always goes for highest outputs of wealth and production, while maintaining enough food production to keep the levels of cities stable. The player can set each city to be A.I.-controlled with different priorities, but the player may as well micro-manage everything as this takes just as much effort.
It is also worth noting here that any city appears to be able to have an unlimited number of buildings. This can result in some gameplay imbalance, as the player may be able to develop a city such that it is particularly sophisticated and productive.
Of course, this city would be of very high value, and thus at risk of enemy attacks; it can also cost a lot to maintain. However, the versatility of such a city can be worth more than the trouble to keep them.
Although cities can benefit from being connected to other cities, they have limited connections of trade with others. These trade routes can be seen when the player brings up the city screen for any city. The player can pick which trade route to utilize, but as trade routes only yield wealth income bonuses, this is better left for the A.I. assistant to handle. This feature could have been more sophisticated if trade between cities could provide more than just wealth income benefits.
GREAT PEOPLE:
"Great People" are special units that are produced via the feature of culture. The culture that the player generates every turn is duplicated and goes into a meter that shows when the next "Great Person" is spawned at the player's capital.
The kind of "Great Person" that the player would get from this method is randomized, though the player's chosen playstyle, or more specifically, the assigning of specialists (more on this later), may influence this occurrence. For example, the player that has invested a lot into generating culture is very likely to get a Great Artist, though this is not a given.
Every Great Person that is obtained will extend the aforementioned threshold of culture, thus making it harder and harder to get more Great Persons, at least not without investing a lot of effort and time into generating culture – and even then, the player is likely to get Great Artists, which he/she may not want.
This makes for very peculiar gameplay-balancing for this mechanic, though it is still welcome and understandable.
Great Persons can also be obtained from building certain Wonders or being the first to unlock certain technologies. These do not contribute to the extension of the culture threshold, conveniently enough.
Great Persons are named after real-world personae, e.g. a Great Artist may be named "Raphael" after the real-world one. This is just cosmetic embellishment of course, as there is no substantial difference between a Great Artist named "Raphael" and another named "Donatello".
Anyway, the Great Person is an immortal that persists in the game world until he is expended. If he is not expended, he can be moved around to confer benefits to cities or tiles with improvements that align with his specialty. For example, a Great Artist can be stationed at a city to bolster its culture generation by a significant margin. However, the Great Person is vulnerable to capture by units belonging to hostile civilizations, so there is a risk that comes from having a Great Person frolic around the world map.
The player can also have a Great Person permanently settling down in a city. This turns the Great Person into a special worker that cannot be placed on any tile, but instead increases the output of the city. This effectively turns him into nothing more than a permanent bonus to the city, but he is still vulnerable to any disruptions that cause the city's workers to be unproductive.
Such a benefit is long-term, but its effects would seem miniscule when compared to the immediate benefits that the player can get from expending them outright. Every type of Great Person has at least one unique way of expending itself. For example, the Great Engineer can be expended in a city to greatly accelerate the construction of a building – preferably a Wonder – whereas the Great Scientist can be expended anywhere to greatly accelerate a research project (preferably a very advanced technology).
As an alternative to all of the benefits that the different Great People offer, the player can expend any of them to trigger a Golden Age.
DIPLOMACY - INTRODUCTORY:
A session can never be played on one's lonesome – there is always at least one other civilization to worry about. Therefore, it is quite inevitable that the player would have to talk to another player, either human-controlled or A.I.-controlled, and make deals that, hopefully, would be of benefit to the player.
However, any gameplay session is ultimately about one civilization achieving the conditions of victory, so the player should expect skulduggery, even from the A.I.
There is a multitude of deals that can be sealed. In the case of deals that are being ironed out with A.I.-controlled opponents, the player is given some informative aid, which will be described later. No such aid would be given when dealing with human opponents, however, though that is not to say that the A.I. is less treacherous.
DIPLOMACY - TRADING:
The bulk of diplomatic deals that the player would have concerns trades of assets. The most common deals are trades of natural resources. Certain units and buildings cannot be produced or produced quickly without natural resources, so some players may want to have access to these from other players that have them.
However, this is not as simple as having the other player "giving" the natural resource. Access can only be gained if the player has some form of physical connection with the other player, which is either a connection via roads on land or a connection via commonly shared bodies of water as well as the necessary harbours.
Trading technologies is a lot simpler; the participants of the trade simply get the technologies unlocked, without having to research them.
Cities can also be traded, but this is so unlikely to happen, even when one player is threatened with very possible annihilation, that one would wonder about the point of including this option in trading deals.
Of course, trading can occur in one direction, though that is just a kinder way of describing extortion. Usually, this can only be done with A.I.-controlled opponents and only when the player has the upper hand in military strength; human-controlled players are more than likely to just concede defeat and quit when they realize that they are a severe disadvantage.
DIPLOMACY – OPEN BORDERS:
A special mention for the diplomatic deal of Open Borders has to be made here, as there are many ramifications to this one, which is deceptively simple.
Open Border deals allow the participants to move units into each other's territories. This means that a participant can wage war against the neighbour of the other participant.
However, the participants cannot exploit this deal to conduct sneak attacks against each other; breaking the deal by whatever means forces the units of the participants to be automatically repositioned into their own territories. This is where the game can cause some disbelief, as units can be moved dozens of tiles away in just one turn, which is a distance that could have taken them many turns to cover.
More peaceful players would want open borders for the possibility of trading. Connecting cities of one civilization to those of others grants both sides some bonuses to wealth income from the trade. Moreover, this is the prerequisite for the trading of natural resources.
DIPLOMACY WITH A.I.:
The game has some aids to help the player craft deals with A.I.-controlled players, which would be handy in single-player sessions. Firstly, there is a screen that shows the relationship between civilizations. These relationships will not be initially apparent, if the player has not encountered the others on the world map yet.
When the player contacts an A.I.-controlled player, an animated 3D model of the leader that the other player has chosen for its civilization is shown on-screen. His/Her facial expressions indicate the current relationship that the player has with the A.I.-controlled player. For example, a pleased look indicates that the A.I.-controlled player has high regard for the player, whereas scowling indicates resentment.
A better indicator is the list of factors that are affecting the relationship, which appears as a tool-tip when the player hovers the mouse cursor over the model of the leader. This list also includes numerical indicators of the magnitudes of effect of these factors.
These aids help the player make decisions on what deals to make, if any, as well as learn about how these factors come about.
Speaking of the factors, generally doing things that are pleasing to the other player would cultivate goodwill in the other towards the player; the converse occurs if the player had been mean to the other, e.g. waging war against it.
The A.I. will eventually forget or get over most of these factors, but their memories of these will still linger anyway. Such designs make A.I.-controlled rivals seem quite comparable to human ones (albeit the A.I. takes the game very seriously), which would be pleasing to players that are looking for a challenge from the A.I.
DIPLOMACY – ALLIANCES:
Alliances are as they sound: different civilizations sign a mutual pact of defence and will automatically declare war on other players that declared war on any member of the alliance.
This is the extent of the technical designs of the alliance. Whatever else that the player wants to do with the alliance is up to the player to decide, though deals with allied A.I.-controlled civilizations are a lot easier than those outside of the alliance.
Before a session starts, the player can decide whether to make alliances permanent or not. This is an important decision, as allies remain a competitor in the race to attain victory, even if war against them is no longer an option. Permanent alliances can never be broken, though as compensation for this rigidity, getting allied A.I. players to send help when they can is quite easy, if they are not pressed themselves.
However, there is a special diplomatic victory that can be obtained by having all players form a mutual alliance. This is considered as a victory of global harmony, so everyone wins, though the player that did the most to forge friendship would be lauded over the rest. It has to be noted here though that the A.I. is incapable of working towards such a victory.
DIPLOMACY - GOING TO WAR:
To wage war against another civilization, a player has to declare war against it first – either with or without a notice. The first option involves using diplomacy tools to send a message to the other civilization, which is considered a lot more "polite" (as polite as declaring war on another can be).
The second option is an impromptu declaration that is made after the player has done something that breaks any peace treaty, such as moving combat units into the city of a rival, effectively occupying it and thus constituting an act of war. This is considered as treacherous, and in the case of A.I.-controlled players, the victim will remember this all too well.
War suspends a lot of diplomatic agreements, including trade, so this is not a decision to be taken likely.
As the war goes on, eventually one side may want to have a truce with the other. Truces, if accepted, irrevocably bind either side to non-aggression against each other for a few turns; there is no loophole around this, apparently. Truces can then develop into peace treaties, which again bind the parties into non-aggression against each other, but for many more turns. Peace treaties allow normal diplomatic options to conveniently resume, though A.I.-controlled players are likely to remember this ordeal all too well.
If a war goes on for too long, the player's cities will eventually suffer hits to their happiness ratings from war fatigue; there is no way to allay this, even if a player picks a civic that is conducive to war. One could suspect that this is a subtle anti-war message on Firaxis' part.
WAGING BATTLES
Anyway, war in Civilization IV involves moving combat units onto tiles with enemy assets and units, simply enough, though the units' positioning, level of technology, experience and the tiles that they fight on will be significant factors in the outcome of the battle.
For example, it is in the player's interest to look for any tile that gives units a defensive advantage, such as hills, if only to deter counter-attacks, and avoid attacking across rivers, which give the defenders an advantage while inflicting penalties on attackers. The A.I. certainly knows how to use tiles to their advantage, so the human player has to learn quickly.
It is also in the player's interest to send units with high combat strength against those with low ones. The disparity has a great influence on the outcome of the battle; participants with a tremendous advantage of strength are more than likely to come out with next to no damage, after having annihilated the opposition. However, if the opposing forces are evenly matched, the player can expect a lot of damage to be inflicted on both, with a high likelihood of a draw.
The outcome of a battle is not necessarily the decimation of one side. It may end in one side withdrawing, which effectively ends the battle for that turn; either side can attempt to engage in another battle in the next turn or so. Certain units can have special abilities that make withdrawals more likely if they are outmatched.
Unfortunately, despite the supposedly sophisticated designs mentioned above, combat is ultimately luck-dependent. Despite being outmatched, a weak unit can somehow manage to bloody a much stronger one, or somehow stall it for a long time, due to very favourable rolls that the game's RNGs make. This gives an impression that there is no decisiveness in any battle, which is to the detriment of the game.
There is a rock-paper-scissors system, e.g. cavalry units have damage bonuses against infantry units. This adds another level of consideration to waging battles.
UNIT EXPERIENCE:
Whenever a unit slays an enemy unit, it gains an experience point. When it has collected enough points, it gains a level; as a bonus, it regains some strength, if it has lost any before it gained a level.
From here, the player can pick one of two options to improve the unit. One of them is usually a general-purpose upgrade, called the "Combat" promotions, which generally increase the strength of the unit. The other grants a situational bonus that is generally more powerful if it comes into effect, but is otherwise useless in other cases.
Therefore, considering these upgrades, it is in the player's interest to nurture units and preserve them after they have been created. This is made possible in the long-term as units retain their experience when upgraded to their higher forms.
However, as powerful as a unit can get down the centuries, it is very vulnerable to attrition, i.e. it can still be whittled down to oblivion by enemies of superior numbers, so highly experienced units will never be overwhelmingly powerful.
GROUPING UNITS & ASSOCIATED ISSUES:
Military units are created one at a time and are by default on their own. However, the player can lump them together into a group for easier movement. However, this convenience comes with a cost: the group will move at the speed of the slowest unit in it. Of course, the player can split them up at any time to have them going in their own directions when necessary, but the player will have to regroup them again, which can be a hassle.
When the stack is ordered to attack a target, the strongest unit in the stack generally starts the battle first, and will be replaced by the next one if it is lost; this goes on until victory is achieved, the stack is annihilated or one side manages to perform a withdrawal.
Unfortunately, this is where this feature of grouping units causes a gameplay problem. Although there is a chance that opposing groups of units may disengage before one or the other is annihilated, when there is not, the bigger group has the advantage of attrition, forcing the opposing group to go through each unit in the bigger group and thus losing any advantage in unit experience that it may have. This problem was so prominent that it was given the moniker of "Stack of Doom".
The "Stack of Doom" exploit gives an unfair advantage to the player that has invested effort, time and resources into mass-producing combat units when he/she goes up against another player that has carefully husbanded his/her/its combat units so that they gain valuable experience – which unfortunately becomes worthless when pitted against overwhelming numbers of enemies in a single turn. The "Stack of Doom" also makes the rock-paper-scissors system useless, as the stacking of units may result in mismatches.
Having a technological superiority is not much of a counter either. If both players have the same research capabilities, the player that resorts to low-tech units can choose to bolster his/her production capabilities so as to produce units en-masse at cheaper costs compared to the other player, who has to spend more production points to create his/her/its higher-tech units, thus having less units.
The only known counters to the "Stack of Doom" are airstrikes and units with group damage abilities. However, airstrikes are only available much later into a session, when players have advanced to eras that have warplanes. Artillery units have the ability to damage entire stacks, but these are generally terrible against other units. Some other units can do the same, but this ability is not available to them by default and has to be gained via the unit experience system.
ADVANCING IN AGES – BENEFITS & SETBACKS:
Unlike other games that concerns civilization-building, advancing in technology is not necessarily all beneficial. That is not to say that the player should delay this though, as having a technological upper hand over rivals is a desirable advantage for just about any playstyle.
However, assets that the player has obtained early in a session may be removed when the player has researched technologies that specifically render them obsolete. For example, the Calendar technology renders the Stonehenge wonder useless.
This makes advancing in technology far from a straight-forward matter, which can seem interesting to people who are tired of the usual single-mindedness of speeding down the tech tree without a concern for any possible drawbacks. It also prevents players from having stacked advantages.
CIVICS:
Civics is somewhat akin to civilization-wide policies that the player can adopt. Initially, only the most basic and mundane of civics is available to the player; he/she/it can fall back to this one if he/she/it does not want a civic with drawbacks, for any other civic is guaranteed to have some.
As the player unlocks more technologies, he/she gains access to options for other civics. However, adopting or switching to other civics is not an immediate process. Generally, the player has to spend at least one turn to change or take on one civic, and during this turn, the player would not get any productivity from his/her cities as they are affected by the game's take on the notion of anarchy.
However, the player that picked a Spiritual leader to lead his/her civilization does not have to suffer this penalty, thus allowing him/her to switch civics from one turn to the next, without any loss in productivity.
Anyway, civics confers benefits and drawbacks to the entire civilization. For example, the Caste System allows the player to circumvent the limit on assigning city workers to work in facilities, which is convenient to players that want more versatility from city workers; however, Caste System causes the player to incur a civilization-wide maintenance cost.
There is also a civic that has effects without it being adopted, namely Emancipation. Upon the first time it is unlocked, by any player, it causes all players to suffer a penalty on the happiness ratings of every city, unless they adopt Emancipation.
Interestingly enough, players can know what civics other players are using. This can be used to anticipate each other's decisions.
RELIGION:
In Civilization IV, religions are bonuses and drawbacks that affect cities. A city can have mixtures of religions, though the majority religion is the one that would provide said bonuses and drawbacks, if it matches the player's state religion. Wily players can also use religion to subvert cities, in ways similar to which can be done with the culture system.
Religions are obtained through the research system, amusingly enough. The first player to unlock a religion is the one to found it; he/she/it gains special bonuses for doing so, so it is in the player's interest to found religions, whenever possible.
Certain religious structures and Wonders are only unique to specific religions, understandably enough. These different buildings confer different benefits, so the player may want to carefully consider which religion to adopt as the state religion; the state religion that the player determines which buildings that he/she/it can build. Moreover, if a city has a religious majority that is different, said buildings can cause problems.
The player can attempt to go around this limitation by switching state religions, but like civics, the player cannot switch the state-sponsored religion so easily. Citizens of religions that are not the same as the state religion would bear resentment, which detracts from the happiness ratings of cities.
Having a state religion allows the player to recruit units known as missionaries, which can then be sent somewhere else to spread the state religion, including the player's own territory.
Perhaps the most strategic benefit of spreading religion is that the player can see cities with religious majorities that are the same as the player's state religion, regardless of whoever the owning player is. This is a great advantage, though it is only useful if the player can spend time and attention to check out these other cities.
Usually, a mixture of religions in a city cause tensions that sap away from the city's happiness rating, but a particular civic dramatically turns this into strength instead.
Curiously enough, some of the most lucrative benefits of religion are commerce-related. Perhaps this is meant to encourage the utilization of religion, as having more money is always good, though some culturally sensitive people may be somewhat offended.
If there is any gameplay issue with religions, it is that the different religions do not appear to have different benefits. They are functionally the same, unless one considers the diplomatic effects of different religions coming into contact with each other.
GRAPHICS:
Despite the apparent jump to 3D, people who are familiar with the 3D remake of Sid Meier's Pirates would realize that much of the graphics for Civilizations IV is recycled from that earlier Firaxis game. This is especially so for objects and models which are associated with the Colonial era; most of these are transferred over whole-sale from Pirates.
There are some art assets that had been made for Civilizations IV, but the most seen object in the game – the world itself – actually uses terrain models and textures from Pirates.
SOUNDS:
Like the graphics, most of the sound designs appear to have been recycled from Sid Meier's Pirates! This is especially so for the voice-overs of combat units when they fight. There are unit responses that correspond to the specific civilizations, but these are poorly accented.
The soundtrack for the main menu and introduction video is perhaps the only good one of the game's sound designs. The soundtrack, "Baba Yetu", makes for a very good first impression of the presentation of the game, especially when it is accompanied by a view of the Earth spinning on its axis, lights coming up to represent the metaphorical birth of civilizations.
Of course, the game itself is not exactly that epic, but if there is any favourably memorable aspect of Civilization IV that is next to impossible to fault, it would be "Baba Yetu".
The other soundtracks are less impressive in comparison, unfortunately. Most of them are subdued and a lot more modest in comparison, which can be to the detriment of the game as despite its engrossing gameplay, Civilization IV is not exactly a game that would keep any player tense all of the time. Nevertheless, they are still pleasing to listen to, if the player is not distracted by some on-screen situation at the time.
CONCLUSION:
Civilization IV is a stupendously sophisticated game for its time, with many features that fit many playstyles for civilization-building. It does have some frustrating issues that render certain aspects of the game difficult to appreciate, especially the waging of war. Furthermore, its jump into the 3D realm would not seem all that wonderful, if one was to consider that Firaxis recycled a lot of cosmetic assets from one of its earlier games.