My very first Civ game. Imagine my surprise when I played it for the first time...
The Bad: hard to pick up for new players even with the tutorial, end game gets long and dull, will make you lose sleep, not exactly on scale with history
When I downloaded the demo for this game, the very first thing I noticed about Civilization 4 was that song. Baba Yetu. From the moment I first heard it, I knew I wanted to get this game. It struck me, hard, that there would be good music in a video game of all places. After learning that it was "The Lord's Prayer" in Swahili, the religious aspects of it didn't even bother me, I still love it despite that.
Well when I first started playing, I was extremely lost. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but I gradually learned as time went on, and I've never really put it down. The game really does grow on you. You end up loving it's core gameplay, wanting to take "just one more turn" over and over again.
The basic gameplay is somewhat simple, you start with a scoutish unit and a settler. Your job is to find a good location for your first city and than found your capital in that location. You start to build and research things to expand your burgeoning empire. Though you can not stay where you are with just one city, no no no, you have to expand. Expand or die as the old saying goes, and it is very true. You need to claim new lands and new resources to increase your wealth.
As you expand, you are called upon to build the fragile "worker" units. These units are the lifeblood of your empire, and without them your cities would quickly die. They have three basic improvements that they can put on the tiles to increase various things on said tiles: farms increase food output, mines increase "hammer" output, and cottages increase gold output. When you first start, it is extremely unclear as to what these three things are and what you need to do with them, though as you continue to play, you start to understand.
Food is necessary for a city to grow. When it gets to a certain food point, you can than "work" another tile for its food, hammers, and gold output. You can only start out by working one tile. Hammers increase the production of the city, making things able to build faster. Gold, or "commerce" increases the amount of money you have which is needed to support troops. Also, a city can have "specialists" instead of working tiles. By having a specialist, you lose one tile's production, but you gain whatever the specialist's abilities are. This is especially important for cities you designate for science or for cities you designate for "culture pressing."
That leads to another point about Civilization, taking over cities. You can take over another ruler's city by going to war and capturing it by destroying all the enemy stationed in the city, the more conventional way. But you can also take over a city by "culture pressing" the city, increasing a particular city's culture to the point where the other city is overwhelmed and the citizens want to join your empire. It is a fun system and is a great way to conquer cities without making the CPU's mad at you, though it isn't practical as a full takeover.
There is also a fun religion system in Civilization 4. When a player reaches a certain tech, they found a certain religion. That religion than gets a specific "holy city" in that player's empire. The holy city gets a huge bonus to happiness. When you adopt a religion as your state religion, you can spread that religion to all of your cities, giving each one a happiness bonus. Having a state religion is a bit of a mixed bag, however, because neighbors with differing religious beliefs won't look to kindly on your pagan ones. I once had Queen Victoria kill me because I was Jewish and she was Christian. This is an easy way of keeping the people happy, as well as making the other leaders like you, though it can also make other leaders hate you as well, so keep that in mind.
There are several different ways to attain victory in Civ 4, though most people go for domination. This is nice, though, because you have alot of different options to explore, even though you will probably just end up crushing all your neighbors.
The game looks and feels fabulous. It really feels like you are going from "The day we arrived on this planet... and blinking, stepped into the sun," (ah the passion of the Lion King, good times) to a futuristic, but not to futuristic, era. The score is superb, including Baba Yetu, the game includes delicious music for all of the civilizations when you zoom in on their cities or talk to their leaders. The graphics are beautiful, looking polished, though a bit old by today's high standards. The best part about the graphics are the colorful portraits of the leaders. The universally hated Montezuma looks like a backstabbing jerk while Gandhi looks like a peaceful, albeit naive old man. The portraits are all well designed and make you really feel like you are talking to these characters.
Some of the bad things about the game include the fact that you won't get any sleep. I've been known to stay up until six playing this thing. Don't play it if you have anything important going on the next day, you will be tired all day. There is a tutorial, but it can be quite confusing. It feels more like Sid is pretentiously bragging about his own game than teaching you how to play. The tutorial ends up not being that much help, and you learn as you go. This isn't really a problem though, as the excellent in-game "Civpedia" can help you understand what you need to understand. It can be frustrating to navigate at times, though.
Another bad thing can be the end game. It can fell like the game has been dragging on forever though you've only taken a couple of turns. Also, the notorious barbarians. They are not really a bad thing, though they add quite a huge challenge to the game in the early stages. I've had towns destroyed or taken by barbarians as well as pillaged improvements and stolen workers. They have apparantly been in every game so far and have always been notorious for early game problems.
The only other problem I could take note of would be the game's rushing through history. It literally goes by quickly, and it's very normal to run right through the intervening ages without even noticing. The turn/year system is also very off. Some turns take up hundreds or thousands of years while others just take a single year, so it feels like making that first worker is taking up a hundred and fifty thousand years to make. This is a minor gripe, but it would have been nice to see the game be a bit more realistic in this sense.
All of these are minor when compared to the sheer fun and beauty that there is to offer in this game. It is a masterpiece. A truly great triumph of strategy. I applaud the entire creative team behind this game. It is great, despite the Disneyish logo on it (Sid Meier's name).Civilization 4 is like a breath of fresh air for me after years of games. It is as if I have finally found an incredible game that I can just sit and play. This is a must have game for any fan of strategy, or even anyone that plays games on the computer. Civilization 4 is a masterpiece that I will be playing for years to come...