I just posted this same post in a thread where a guy asked if he'd like Civ IV. It's better suited to this discussion though... I've been considering what's in each version of civ in terms of a game concept... Now of course Civ II had some things over Civ I, but still...
In general CivRev is actually a little more fun than I expected, but I was thinking about it, and I'm likenning the depth of strategy and complexity to that of about Civ I. To me, that's a HUGE step back.
Civ I:
- Contains concept of population happiness. This is the ultimate determinant of how large your city can grow.
- Can't remember if Civ I had luxury taxes (divert commerce into luxuries to make people happy) or if it was just from making city people do entertaining instead of working a square.
- Contains concept of consumed food - each citizen consumes 2 food so to grow you need sqaures that provide surplus.
- Contains concept of maintanence costs. Each building costs gold to maintain.
- Contains concept of terrain movement cost - hills, forest, etc take 2 turns of movement, roads only 1/3 turn. Railroad provides unlimitted movement. The obsolesence of Railroad in CivRev sort of bothers me - it was a critical turning point into industrialization in Civ I and Civ II. Probably the biggest turning point in the game, IMO.
- Concept of unit maintanence - units cost gold to maintain once they're built.
- Biggest difference: Civ I has concept of Workers - units that build and improve on terrain squares - they build roads on individual squares, build farms, build mines, etc.
But there are things in CivRev that aren't in Civ I...
- CivRev contains concept of culture (although very simplified)
- CivRev contains concept of Great People.
- Contains concept of Attack Strength / Defense Strength, and damaged units (Civ I just had unit strength)
- Contains concept of Armies and also of unit promotions.
So in general I'd say CivRev is just slightly less complicated than Civ I. Civ IV though, is a whole other animal. It has everything in Civ I and Civ Rev, plus:
- Concept of health. As a city grows it becomes unhealthy and that will waste food production, which then limits growth. It's a second growth-limitting factor besides happiness.
- Concept of controlable resources: Luxuries (like gold) to make people happy, food resources (rice, wheat) to add health, and strategic resources (iron, coal) to make certain types of units and to build railroads, etc.
- With controllable resources comes trade of those resources among civs.
- Expanded concept of culture - each cities culture clearly determines borders and territory between neighbouring civs.
- Concept of religion (affects happiness as well as wealth generation).
- Corportations (use controllable resources to generate wealth)
- National Wonders - these are wonders that are available to every nation independant of other nations, but only after the nation reaches a milestone (like, after building so many banks, you can build Wall Street). Incidently, are wonders in CivRev able to be duplicated? If so they kind of (unfortunately) act like national wonders. World Wonders can only be build by one person, so the "Wonder Race" is a critical part of every Civ game since Civ started.
- Civ IV replaces building maintanance of Civ I with city maintanence. Each new city costs gold/turn; more if it's further from the capital.
- Concept of other government states (called Civics) beyond just one type of "main" government. There are 6 civic categories (market system (free market), representation (voting system), religion (organized or free religion, etc) and each category has 5 options.
Hmm, I think that's a pretty good comparison between the three. I probably missed some concepts here and there; feel free to chime in if anyone else has more. Ultimately it's the interaction between all the elements of complexity in a game like Civ IV that make it such an in-depth strategy game...