1) "OVERALL EXPECTATIONS [0] I want CivIV to revolutionize itself.”

While CivIV is no revolution, I appreciate what Soren has done within the confines I suspect he was given. One of the things that impressed me most about him many, many months ago was that he held a very clear idea that CivIV should improve on CivIII in careful ways while adding new elements that are just as carefully chosen. I even downloaded his PowerPoint presentation on this and discussed it with a friend of mine over lunch. It was an interesting chat, and Soren's measured approach is likely to lead him to a very successful career as a game designer, despite guys like me.

In any event, I wanted CivIV to wow me with something new at its core. Imagine, for example, that after discovering a certain technology, you find yourself running states instead of cities; instead of deciding between a coliseum or theater for the 20th time, you find yourself thinking about the relative strengths and weaknesses of a limited pool of state governors that you must appoint to do this work for you -- rightly or wrongly. Some governors are warmongers, some are builders. Some are conservative and some are liberal. All of them, however, have to answer to their constituents, who in turn reflect the particular experiences and resources of their region…etc. In other words, the difficulty of running the empire becomes less about micro-management tedium and more about interesting governance decisions to keep the empire from falling in on itself. I realize, of course, that at a certain point I am asking for a different type of game, but I do believe a lot more can be done with Civ than we've seen to date.

However, I have discovered that many Civers don't think that way at all. Somebody (I don't remember who) told me that he basically wants CivIII+ because “it feels comfy.” O.K. I don't think that poster represents a minority opinion, either, so Soren had to choose his moments wisely lest he produce something decidedly “uncivilized” – sorry.

That said, CivIV's greatest improvement is in how Infinite City Sleaze (profitably spewing cities on every possible square at every possible moment) is handled. Unless somebody finds a way to break the game mechanics, I see no way in CivIV to mindlessly spam cities everywhere to reliably win game after game. Mind you, I spent the first two weeks of the game trying to do just that, and the results were varied. Sometimes I did rather well…other times I was crushed easily, but never did the process seem devoid of some strategic thinking. Of course, by the end game when playing for a conquest victory on a standard map with 10 players, you can conquer 40-50 cities or more. The ensuing micromanagement gives a person ICS flashbacks for sure, though the early game is wonderfully free of this mess.

So while Soren has fixed a major problem without violating the Civ spirit, I still feel that more can and should be done with the franchise. I'll offer some (stolen) ideas at the end of this review.

2) "THE MANUAL [-1] The manual should explain all important concepts in detail. Also, I need an index (or searchable PDF version).”

Listen, I love the spiral bound manual for pure aesthetics. I also love that we weren't simply told “go click on the manual on your CD” – at least I thought I loved that until I realized the manual has no index. Doesn't Microsoft Word even include an Index Wizard? C'mon. What I would like to think distinguishes the typical Civ player from the typical Doom player (hey, I like Doom in small doses, so don't get wrong) is that the Civ player actually likes to understand the underlying logic, if not the outright math, involved in a particular tile improvement or wonder. The CivIV manual is lacking here, even forgetting the horrible lack of an index.

Just one concept that gets no attention is inflation, and this list could go on and on. And not having a PDF version, while probably somewhat useful in making piracy a little less gratifying, also makes the gaming experience for legitimate owners a little less enjoyable, too. Especially, let's say, if you don't include an index to your print manual. I also think about those who have downloaded CivIV legitimately. What about them? Overall the manual fails to deliver (though Soren's Afterwords were very well done).

3) “TUTORIAL [-1] Considering that the tutorial can form your first impression of the game, it should be helpful and inspiring.”

I suppose I could ignore the tutorial, but it's a wreck! There are moments when you have to click some exact unit or part of the screen otherwise the tutorial won't advance. However, these elements aren't always on the screen, and you are not always told where these elements are, either. I gave up the first time I tried to run the tutorial because I thought the game froze (by the way, when I reloaded the saved tutorial game, it ended in one turn with me as the victor having a score of 13,000 or something…which meant I got to see a victory moving for doing nothing AND this forced me to start the tutorial over again!).

Really, the tutorial in this state should have simply been gutted rather than putting such a poor foot forward. This is before we even consider that the tutorial does almost nothing to prepare you for the real game. Was the tutorial even finished?

“4) GRAPHICS and SOUNDS [-1] Good graphics and sounds in a strategy game should never come at the expense of computer performance from beginning to end.”

Given that a lot of performance (and compatibility) issues seem directly tied to the decision to go 3D and push the graphics envelope, I think the 3D move was a mistake. I would have said this before the flood of technical problems were posted to the forums. The *only* saving grace for this move to 3D, if I understand it, is that graphics mods will actually be easier to do than if things were in 2D. If that's true, then there's something to look forward to. Indeed, toward the end of the review, I'll show some interesting graphic scaling options made possible by Firaxis' decisions in this area and a clever tool offered by ColdFever: http://www.civfanatics.net/~bluemarble/content/index.php

Don't get me wrong: I don't think it's a zero sum game. Good graphics and good sounds don't have to come at a sacrifice of system performance, but it seems they have this time, which is unfortunate for a strategy game like Civ.

5) “THE INTERFACE [-1] I think the interface should make my attempt to do or find something effortless and intuitive.”

The issues with the interface are too many to list here, but some include help pop-ups that only last 2 seconds before going away, the computer not being able to tell whether the cursor is on an interface element or the map itself, pop-up help that mysteriously just goes away and won't come back unless you alt-tab out and back in or start over. (Note: The first patch fixed some of these.) And these advisor screens are a complete wreck. Also, why aren't text items hyperlinked to the Civilopedia?

I said I wouldn't try to list everything, but here are some more without even thinking too hard: the enter key is used both to close a screen and to end a turn, for example, which is just bad design; some screens you can close with the keyboard (use the enter key on the city view) while others force you to use the mouse to click on the exit button; if I want to see all my units in a city, I have to click the little arrow button once my units no longer fit in the allotted horizontal slot, which wastes time needlessly; upon exiting the city view, the game focus jumps to another city, which negates the purpose of examining the city to make a build decision (I discovered that the ESC key is a workaround for this); you can't drop down to the map when in discussions with the AI in order, for instance, to find the city you are demanding from him; building queue, really? etc.

It's tough to figure out how such an interface gets released except to say, perhaps, that the Firaxis mantra of “work from a playable prototype and make incremental changes until the game seems fun” can blind the designer to how clunky the interface is – you get used to something early when you're designing something merely functional to process the game mechanics, and it's probably too easy to think that slapping up some colorful screens some weeks before release means the work is finished. It might also be the case that the testers of the interface did their testing with a Firaxis person nearby explaining everything. I don't know.

I think the interface is central to enjoying the game…it's how you interface with the game, after all…and it seems apparent that Firaxis has a lot of room to improve on this one. And can I just ask: Why in the world is there a delay between events on screen and notifications of them to the player? I sometimes still see phantom AI unit labels in my territory the turn *after* they have withdrawn thanks to a peace treaty. Or the pillage sound will come long after the tile is actually pillaged. Inexcusable.   ... Previous Page | Next Page...

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