One man's review of Civ IV. In-depth, with pictures.

[Greek Plunder]

Okay, all, I finally recieved my shipment from EB Games today, by way of FedEx. It's about darn time, if you ask me. It was stuck in Mirabel, Quebec all yesterday and into the night, so I'm grateful it came to me when it did.

I'll start with my computer's specs, and how it runs for me. We'll get the technical stuff out of the way first.

- ATi Radeon 9800 PRO 128MEG Video Card running at 8x AGP with drivers up to date
- 1 gig of dual channel RAM
- SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card
- Lots of space on the hard drive left, no spyware or viruses
- Running the game with all settings on HIGH with 1024x768 resolution as this is all my monitor will support

With these settings, the game runs basically flawlessly for me. No real noticeable slow down, or anything like that. No freezes, etc.

After about six hours of game play, I've experienced TWO complete crashes. I don't mean crashes to desktop, but I mean full on, critical error, restart the computer on its own crashes. The first one happened when what turned out to be a banana resource showed up with no texture. I zoomed in on it, and the computer restarted. The second happened for a reason I didn't catch, but as it were, I was waiting for the other Civs to finish their turns, and it restarted my computer.

Luckily I'm a patient man, and for the amount of fun there is to be had, I consider these minor annoyances. But, for the sake of Firaxis and the other people who are experiencing worse glitches than this, I hope they patch it soon.

Also, I forgot to mention, the install went fine, took awhile, but went fine. Do NOT forget to install the version of DirectX that comes with this game. At first, I didn't, and got a DirectX error that wouldn't let me launch. If you forget to, go into CD 1 and under the DirectX folder, install it. They really should have put some warning on it, that this had Civ-specific files on it.

Okay, on to the game itself. I'll say right here and now, one more turn syndrom is back. Added on top of all the other syndromes I have, this is bad news for me, but probably good news for you.

Where should I begin? I'll start with my personal impressions on the interface, something I had been worried about for awhile before recieving the game. Fortunately, most of all my worries were for naught. It's attractive (I thought it looked too simple, and boring from the screenshots) and serves its purpose well. It's slightly transparent, so you can see the terrain behind it, and doesn't take up as much of the screen as I had originally thought it would, after reading the impressions of a few people on this message board. Remember, I run this on 1024x768 as I have a 15 inch LCD monitor, so space is always a problem for me, but I find it fine. If there's one thing that IS bothersome, it's the little tiny 'next turn' button. Of course, you can always just press space or enter.

The Civilopedia, on the other hand, is not so good. It's actually rather bad. I do NOT care for the 'little pictures instead of text' approach, not to mention there are not enough hyper links inside of entries. For instance, when you go into a terrain improvement entry, and it says that you can now Build Farms with it, Build Farms is highlighted, but when you click it, it doesn't do anything. You have to go all the way back to the main menu, click improvements, and then farms (all the while trying to figure out which one little icon is the farms one). They really should have kept it like Civ 3. This is probably my biggest gripe with the game, and even though the Civilopedia isn't completely necessary, it's still good to resort to from time to time, especially since the game is new. I've attachedn image of the Civilopedia below, so you can take a peek and see what I mean...

Now, if I dislike the Civilopedia, I absolutely LOVE the new 'globe' view. This mode is just amazing, in my opinion. You clikc the button, or just zoom out yourself (using your mouse wheel) and it takes you to a view of the globe that you can spin around to view the map. There are different options for overlays that are clickable from this screen, with one being particularly good; the Signs button. With this option, you can label anything in the game. Just click a spot on the map, and type something in. This is particularly useful for role-players, as when you zoom back in, the label is still there! I've attached two pics below to demonstrate... Notice, when zoomed in, how the city on the right slopes down toward the water. 3-D is truly great!

The other options are very helpful, as these include a unit indicator which marks units on the globe, a religion spread overlay, a culture spread overlay (very useful, as it shows how widespread everyone's culture is, and which areas of these cultures are susceptible to flip) a trade group overlay, and a resource indicator (in the same way as the indicator for units works). Overall, this global view of the world is probably one of my very favorite new additions to the game.

I'll make a reply below this with more of my review/impressions.

 

[Asterothe]

I haven't noticed the labels on the global view,
thank you! I liked the global view a lot as well.

 

[Mercade]

Thanks for this review, Greek Plunder.

Do enjoy your games while I patiently await the game's arrival in NL / UK.

One question about the Civilopedia. Do those silly icons have tooltips if you hover over them? That would at least make it somewhat useable.

Thanks,

M.

 

[Greek Plunder]

Moving on to graphics now, all I can say is wow! They're phenomenal! I was expecting something special, but I didn't think they'd be this ALIVE. Everything is animated. Trees sway, water from the beach washes ashore, resources like ivory have the elephants walking around, your mines belch smoke... I could go on and on, it simply has to be seen to soak it all in. Your cities actually LOOK like cities now, with every single improvement displayed in the actual game world. Cities expand, and can eventually take up more than one tile in space. When your troops walk through the forest, birds fly out of the trees. Your armies leave tracks on the ground when they run from tile-to-tile. It's simply amazing!

And your troops... they animate beautifully, as well. Your galleys on the water roll back and forth, your workers wipe the sweat from their brows, and the camera zooms up on your armies assaulting the cities of another civilization. When you construct a city along the coast, little ships begin to collect around it in the water over time, reflecting the growth of the town.

I could go on all day. There are so many of these tiny touches that really make it all seem so alive. Stylistically, there are one or two things I could live without. I find the units a bit too big, and when you get a lot on screen, it CAN seem a little cluttered with three models per unit. Of course, you can always change it in the options, and only display one unit, with health bar.

As well, the roads don't always connect, and can sometimes look a little ugly when they don't. They might end suddenly, and it seems that the flood plains tiles display OVER the roads. This must be a bug.

Other than that, you really can not be displeased with the graphics. Anyone that says they don't add anything is dead wrong. Either they have a bad system that can't handle the game, or they're blind. The atmosphere is amazing. In the images below, notice how the borders conform the bends in the rivers now. The coast line LOOKS like a coastline, it isn't square and dull, and the cliffs actually rise out of the water. Jungles and forests are actually jungles and forests, and stretch for a VERY long time. They are real obstacles for expansion, now, and war.

EDITED: It's hard to capture it in run down looking JPEGs, but trust me, the graphics are great.

 

[Greek Plunder]

Thanks for this review, Greek Plunder.

Do enjoy your games while I patiently await the game's arrival in NL / UK.

One question about the Civilopedia. Do those silly icons have tooltips if you hover over them? That would at least make it somewhat useable.

Thanks,

M.

Yes, they DO have tooltips that display in the top right corner, but it's still time-consuming and a bad design decision. Dunno why they chose to do it this way. For instance, in that pic of the Civilopedia I took, it shows some of the techs. You have to go over all of those, looking for the tool tips to find the single one you want.

 

[Zhahz]

One question about the Civilopedia. Do those silly icons have tooltips if you hover over them? That would at least make it somewhat useable.

Yes, they have tooltips, and they're alphabetized or otherwise decently organized when you encounter them outside the 'pedia...and they're the same icons you'd see anywhere else in the game like when you set production or whatever. Twisted as it may be, I'm already learning many of them and I'm sure after I play the game for 25+ hours this weekend I'll have almost every tech and unit icon in the game memorized.

I love Civ IV but I do think the 'pedia has taken a step sideways (and almost backwards). I much prefered the browser feel of the one in Civ III. However, there are tooltips for pretty much everything on the map and in every interface, so I find there is almost no need to use the 'pedia except when you just want something to read (while eating some pizza as fast as possible, for ex).

 

[Mujadaddy]

Yeah the "organization" of the Civilopedia and the Tech Tree is really my ONLY complaint with the game...

You'd think that having it all XML-based it would be chock-full of hyperlinks...

 

[Shakes]

After about six hours of game play, I've experienced TWO complete crashes. I don't mean crashes to desktop, but I mean full on, critical error, restart the computer on its own crashes. The first one happened when what turned out to be a banana resource showed up with no texture. I zoomed in on it, and the computer restarted. The second happened for a reason I didn't catch, but as it were, I was waiting for the other Civs to finish their turns, and it restarted my computer.

Complete crashes are almost always driver problems, not problems with the game. Under Windows 2000 and XP, normal applications (such as games) can not crash the operating system. Only the operating system itself, or the drivers it runs, can do that.

 

[Greek Plunder]

Okay, I took a break last night, but now it's Saturday, and it's time to play again!

Let me begin by mentioning the sound in the game. It's fantastic. The music in this version is easily the best in any of the previous Civ games, and it has one of the best, most dynamic soundtracks of any game yet this year. It's a mixture of old Civ tunes re-mixed, and brand new ones. When zoomed out in the Ancient Era, there is little to no music, and the world feels empty, and uncivilized. The more cities you get, and the farther you get into the tech tree, finally reaching the Classical Era, music begins to be heard quietly in the background, sometimes jumping to the fore. Finally, by the time you reach the Medeival Age, music is almost always playing. I haven't played an Oriental civ yet, but from playing Spain, the music in the Medeival Age is a mixture of gregorian chants and classical music. It's plain awesome. I really like how they chose to include vocals in their soundtrack with Civ IV. It really adds flavour.

When you zoom in really close to your cities, it will play your theme, quietly. When you zoom in over another civ's cities, it will do the same, but with their theme. Each leader has different music, and it really helps set civilizations apart.

When zoomed out in globe view, all you can hear is wind, as the clouds float by.

I have to add, also, that every different type of terrain has ambient music. For instance, when you are moving your view over jungle terrain, it SOUNDS like a jungle. Birds call, and bugs chirp. When you are over tundra, wind is the prevailing sound. When you move over the coast line, water splashes ashore, and even when you are over a river, you can hear it gurgle.

But, my favorite thing to do with sound, besides the music, are the unit acknowledgements. Now, this could have been done like any old RTS game, where the units yell out their names in funny voices. But no. Every single civ has the unit acknowledges done in THEIR language. When clicking a unit that belongs to the Romans, for instance, the unit speaks LATIN. When selecting a Japanese unit, they acknowledge you in Japanese. It may not sound like a lot, but that is extreme detail on Firaxis's part, and it is very miuch appreciated.

 

[mabellino]

Excellent review!

Now if only it were Friday already!

 

[dpaajones]

I like the way in which you can add labels. When you save the game, do they re-appear when you load the game afterwards?

 

[Depravo]

I like the way in which you can add labels.

Yes, another welcome borrowing from SMAC. I used to enjoy labelling landmarks, battle sites etc.