(P)REVIEWS - Civilization IV Preview by Solver
What Do You Want to Build Today?
I will now speak about domestic issues in CivIV. How you build things, manage your cities and your empire has definitely changed, and these changes are quite interesting.
The first change is that you can no longer switch production from one item to another and keep the amount of shields the previous project has gathered. If you are halfway through building a Library and switch to a Chariot, you'll start building the Chariot from scratch and can later go back to finish the Library from where you left off… although the production progress will decay if you leave it for too long. This change might not sound like something terribly major, but it is.
There's no more switching 6 cities producing economic buildings to defensive units if you get attacked to get those defenders out easily. There's no more changing your mind on what you want to build halfway there, and there's no changing production from a Wonder you got beaten to. If someone beats you to a Wonder, you get a refund in gold but you've also wasted a good amount of production turns in your city. You have to plan ahead and think more carefully about your building choices. After a few games you will notice that it really changes the way the game is played.
There is a wide array of buildings in CivIV: military, scientific, religious and economic. Since some of these buildings also allow you to convert citizens to specialists (more on that later), they are very valuable. In fact, your cities tend to be really valuable in CivIV - you can't just have a dozen small outposts. That makes sense largely because of maintenance costs - your cities had better pay for themselves or serve some useful purpose.
Tile improvements built by your Workers are also different. There are now more tile improvements available, some of which can only be built on certain resource types such as Pastures which can only built on tiles with herd animals. And for any of you worried, no, you cannot mine grassland. One of the new improvements is a Cottage, and it's an interesting improvement indeed. A Cottage gives you some commerce, but if a city works it, then the Cottage will later grow to be a Hamlet, which will later turn into a Village, which finally turns into a Town -Villages give you more commerce, and Towns even more. Thus, Cottages are long-term investments: they may not be a great benefit by themselves, but once fully grown, become excellent improvements.
Another very happy change is that you no longer require hordes of Workers. If in CivIII you could easily have had over 80 Workers, which could drive you to insanity even if you automated them, you will no longer need to employ such numbers in CivIV. Partially, this is because your land area is likely not going to be as huge as in CivIII. In addition, the early expansion is slower, which means that you do not need a plethora of Workers to keep up with all the extra cities you're churning out, so fewer Workers can manage to improve all of your early cities.
Of course, CivIV wouldn't be Civ without Wonders. There are National Wonders and World Wonders. National Wonders are in CivIV like Small Wonders were in CivIII. An interesting detail is that resources such as Stone or Marble can speed up the construction of some Wonders. The effects of Wonders in CivIV are pretty diverse - some will give you free experience or a promotion for units, while others will increase commerce. Others still boost research, further construction of Wonders, one increases your defense capabilities, and one even starts a Golden Age. Finally, as many of you are already likely aware, Wonder movies are making their return in CivIV.
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