(P)REVIEWS - Civilization IV Preview by MarkG
Hands-On Civilization 4 Preview: Part 1
The Right Beginning
Opening the game starts your path into the new 3D world which has been shown already in tons of screenshots in recent months.
It is when you actually enter the game you started that things begin to
not only look but feel different. You'll quickly find out that there is
no context right-click menu as right click is used to move units. Not
to worry ' there's an option to change that. In fact you'll find that
there are plenty of gameplay & interface options...
The Emperor's Interface
The interface carries a blue transparent styling, escaping from the
traditional stone, rock or marble designs that we have seen a thousands
times in strategy games.
Looking around you'll notice that at the top of the screen you have the
(typical) gold information on the left, the current technology being
developed in the center and some quick-access-to-screens buttons on the
right. The technology info has a nice feature: clicking it allows you
to change what you develop instantly. This won't make you loose the
progress you have made in discovering your previous technology though.
The points you have gathered for that technology will be there waiting
for you when you choose to develop it later. You might actually find
you won't be using the buttons on the right much as there are keyboard
shortcuts for all of them (at least I did).
Soon enough you also find out that you won't be using the city screen
much either (Solver disagrees, but hey, what are friends for?). It's
still there, presenting all the info about the city, but
single-clicking on the city name gives you the build order interface so
you don't need to go in and out of the city screen. Useful keyboard
shortcuts (there are about 100 of them in total!) in the build order
interface are SHIFT-click for inserting at the top, CTRL-click for
inserting at the bottom and ALT-click for endless building of a single
item (cavalry factory! :)). Also, simply moving your mouse over a city
will display information on how fast it's growing/building, how much
resources are collected, culture/great people status, etc.
But what will happen when your hordes of cavalry are created?
Developer, Firaxis Games, saves you precious time in your life by
adding rally points. Each city can have its own or you can mass select
cities (CTRL-click on a city selects all your cities, ALT-click only
the ones on the same continent) and assign their rally points at once.
In the end, the ultimate new interface additions are sign posts (e.g.
you get to place name locations :)) and lines (yes, you can draw your
strategic plans on the map!) on the globe view's strategy mode.
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